Question Unable to view images posted via imgur

[Pimpom]

I don't know which section to post this in, so here goes:

Lately - I'm not sure since when - I haven't been able to view images posted in the forum. They are shown as blank gray squares with a negative smiley (is that the proper term?) and the error message "imgur.com refused to connect".

At first I thought it was a temporary glitch but this has been going on for some time. I can't even open the imgur site to check my own account. This happens with Chrome, Brave and Edge. My attempts to open imgur.com always gets the message {"data":{"error":"Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later."},"success":false,"status":403}

isitdownrightnow.com says imgur.com is up. And, judging from posts in the forum, others apparently can view images posted via imgur. Using a VPN makes no difference.

I run Windows 10 22H2 with everything at default settings and haven't made a hardware change in a long time. What else can I do?

 

[Lutfij]

Is your version of Chrome browser on the latest update? Have you tried using a VPN? Maybe your region is affected with what you're referring to...?

Moved thread from Networking section to Apps and Software section.

 

[Pimpom]

Is your version of Chrome browser on the latest update? Have you tried using a VPN? Maybe your region is affected with what you're referring to...?

Both Chrome and Brave are on auto-update so I'm assuming that they are up-to-date.
Chrome: 135.0.7049.85
Brave: 1.77.97

I already mentioned that using a VPN makes no difference. I tried US and European servers.

 

[stonecarver]

If you have imgur pinned to your browser tabs sometimes you need to close that link and just open a new fresh imgur and re pin.

At least that was my solution as this happed to me as well. YMMV

 

[Pimpom]

No, I don't have imgur pinned to my browser tabs, not even on my Speed Dial 2 extension bookmarks. I seldom visit imgur except when I want to upload an image for linking to this forum.

 

[Pimpom]

Update: I contacted imgur support and this is what they say -
"If you are seeing a 403 error when accessing Imgur, this likely means your network has been blocked due to abuse. Unfortunately, you will need to use a different network to access Imgur. "

The error message I get when I try to open imgur.com does include the code 403 (see the first post).

I use JioFiber, by far the biggest ISP in India with half a billion subscribers. I first asked friends in my city who use JioFiber and then asked in an Indian techno-forum. They all report that they too are blocked.

I'm still surprised though that imgur is blocking us even through a VPN. Well, I'm not going to subscribe to two ISPs just to be able to access imgur.