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Comment by duskdozer | Hacker News Reader

That's great until it's some essential government, medical, educational, etc. service that you have either no alternative to or no alternative that isn't also using the same thing. I'm already being slowly and incrementally softlocked out of some (fortunately non-essential so far) sites either by cloudflare or other more subtle "anti-bot" networks as time goes on, including some like I've listed above. I can only expect this will continue until it's something I can't avoid.

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For some reason, I'm softlocked from booking tickets from Deutsche Bahn. The website errors out with a cryptic "Your browser's behavior resembles that of a bot." message with no option to try again or pass a captcha or whatever. The website itself described several possible solutions but none helped (I tried using different computers, different internet connections, even a phone connected to internet using a SIM from a different country).

As for now, when I need to travel to Germany, I just book tickets through the national carrier of my home country, which for cross-border tickets often turns out to actually be cheaper than booking through DB. Thankfully I don't live in Germany proper and my need for travel there is not that high (once or twice a year at most) but I wonder what would I do if I had to move to Germany and use trains there more often.

Same problem but with French equivalent SNCF (sncf-connect.com). I just checked and can confirm nothing has changed. You cannot use up-to-date Firefox on Linux to access the main booking site for French rail tickets.

    Access is temporarily restricted

    We detected unusual activity from your device or network.

    Reasons may include:

    -Rapid taps or clicks
    -JavaScript disabled or not working
    -Automated (bot) activity on your network (IP X.X.X.X)
    -Use of developer or inspection tools

Does it work if you spoof the user agent?

> -Use of developer or inspection tools

Gotta love it.

Developer tools are easily detected by looking for the viewport to resize a certain amount.

I just opened the developer tools, then chose 'Separate Window' from the menu. The developer tools are now on my other screen, and then I clicked Reply to your message. The developer tools window that I had open is not relating to this tab, but when I opened Developer Tools for this tab, it remembered that I wanted it in a separate window and did so again. The viewport should not have changed at all..?

It gets blocked in a private window, but only on the second page load. So more sophisticated than UA-blocking.

The finger-wagging about "Use of developer or inspection tools" is just outrageous. Akin to accusing users of thought crime.

The only solution to all this will be through elections and laws.

DB has been finicky for me from abroad as well, using a VPN to Germany usually helped. Still sucks though.

> That's great until it's some essential government, medical, educational, etc. service

At which point you should contact your attorney general, and work to ensure such efforts face legal challenges at every turn.

Which won’t solve the problem at all.

No, it won't, and this mechanism should not be used by anyone, but it'd at least ensure that people aren't forced to use it to interact with their government.

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