Logins blocked

[twathle]

Perhaps I should have titled this posting as "Disabling Browser Guard Fixes Blocked Logins".

I can't login to HomeDepot.com. Testing shows that Home Depot's website isn't down. I can access HomeDepot website pages via my history, but I can't login via its signin page. I called HomeDepot.com at 1800-466-3337. I kept selecting the online options (even when they didn't apply). I eventually got transferred to sofware support. The rep was quite competent. She pointed out that a google search on my failure -- that my login page gets stuck with the following msg showing in the bottom left corner of the screen: performing TLS handshake with gstatic.com -- suggested that the problem lay with FireFox, not Home Depot. I verified her claim by performing the same google search. I cleared FireFox's cookies. No joy. I quit out of, and then re-entered, FireFox. No joy.

Nextly, the rep wanted me to re-create my FireFox profile from scratch. Ugh. Alternatively, she said that I could try creating a new HomeDepot account with a different email address. I tried to do that. I eventually got to the point where I was supposed to pass a captcha before creating my new account, but the webpage displayed no captchas for me to pass. Instant checkmate. This stink is redolent of my recent login problems with Torrentday.com. Yep. Testing shows that I can't login to Tday either. I verified that both HomeDepot and Tday were listed in Browser Guard's allowed list. I restarted FireFox and tried again. Same result.

I reset my PC. No joy. I disabled Browser Guard. I restarted FireFox. No joy. I reset the PC. Joy! Once again, I can login to both Home Depot and Tday. I re-enabled Browser Guard and restarted FireFox. I can still login to both websites.

  FireFox 88.0 64-bit
  Automatic updates are disabled

  Browser Guard 2.3.11
  Last updated Oct 31, 2021
  Allow automatic updates .... Default

There is something funky going on here in that login-blockage events do not coincide with software updates. The first login blockages occurred on 10/6/2021, while running BG 2.3.10. I had installed FireFox 91.1.0esr about 7 days before. I recovered by reverting to a system backup that I'd made 2 months earlier. I was now running FireFox 88.0 -- a version that ran well with my system. Since I disable automatic updates, FireFox 88.0 remained active going forward. The login blockage recurred on 10/30/2021, while running BG 2.3.10. I recovered by disabling Browser Guard and resetting the PC. I updated Browser Guard to v2.3.11. The login blockage recurred again on 11/15/2021. I recovered by disabling Browser Guard and resetting the PC.

 

[gonzo]

I just created a Home Depot account using Chrome with Browser Guard enabled, then logged out of the HomeDepot website. I then went to Firefox, also using Browser Guard and logged into Home Depot with no problems.  I am using Firefox 94.0.1 (64-bit) and Browser Guard 2.3.11. Browser Guard shows 15 blocks on 11 URLs while logged in to homedepot.com. None prevented login, and the site you mentioned is not on the list.  I have a request out to the developer to determine if an older browser version may cause an issue. I have not received a response.

Please attempt a login again, and check the Browser Guard interface to see how many blocks/domains appear, and if any are shown in red. You may also need to send a Browser Guard log which hopefully will provide more insight. It is available on the Support tab, and will require you to create a ZIP file from the JSONL file which will be created in your DOWNLOADS folder.

[twathle]

Gonzo --

While attempting to re-create and log my problems logging into HomeDepot.com and TorrentDay.com, I discovered that I could those problems by disabling, and then re-enabling, Private Internet Access' MACE utility, which apparently functions much like Browser Guard. I disabled an earlier occurrence of these same problems by uninstalling Browser Guard and restarting the PC. I have no idea how to make sense of these facts. I'm just happy that I have found a way to fix the problems.

Thank you for your response.

 

[gonzo]

I'm happy you found a suitable solution as well. When multiple apps that are supposed to help you line up to do the opposite, its sometimes a challenge to find and fix the issue.

[twathle]

Gonzo --

A further update.  My login problems returned; and after another exhaustive bout of debugging and more websearch, I believe that I have discovered their true cause.  A forum entry (by another VPN user with the same problem) claimed that Google punishes VPN users by blocking their access to its capcha tools -- which silently prevents those users from logging into a wide variety of websites.  The recommended work-around is to vector your DNS requests thru  a "DNS resolver".  I believe that a resolver acts like a middle man, passing DNS requests on to actual DNS servers.  A resolver prevents corporate spyware (eg. Google) from being able to tell for whom an access is being performed.