Cloudflare’s 1020 “Access Denied” error occurs when a connection request arrives that appears to pose a threat to the site.
Error 1020 can sometimes happen by mistake if your website has missing or outdated information, or if the server has crashed.
So how can you (quickly) fix Cloudflare Error 1020 Access Denied?
Let’s find out.
What is a 1020 Error on Cloudflare?
Cloudflare Error 1020: Access Denied indicates that you’ve violated a firewall rule and your connection request has been blocked. There are a few issues that can cause a legitimate IP address to be blocked by error 1020 from accessing your website, and often it’s a quick fix.
If you’re a legitimate IP address, this is an easy error to fix.
I won’t waffle-on talking about what the error is anymore (promise).
This is how you fix it👇🏻
How To Fix Cloudflare Error 1020: Access Denied
- Check Whether Cookies Are Allowed
- Clear Your Cache & Cookies
- Check Your Server Configuration
- Contact Cloudflare Support
1. Check Whether Cookies Are Allowed
Cloudflare uses cookies to customize certain features of its site according to the visitor’s actions.
This allows Cloudflare to provide visitors with a faster, personal, and more relevant experience.
Which is cool… except when they contribute to you not being able to access a site.
Check your web browser to ensure that cookies are permitted, or else you may encounter error 1020 on web pages with a more strict firewall rule regarding cookies.
Certain browser extensions can block different cookies.
If you’re having trouble getting the browser to accept the site’s cookie, try toggling extensions on and off to see if any of them are creating the block.
2. Clear Your Cache & Cookies
When you load a site, your browser automatically stores files on your computer that help the site load faster the next time you visit it.
If there are errors on this locally-saved (“cached”) copy of the webpage, you may encounter unexpected issues like “error 1020: access denied” even when you’ve successfully visited the site in the past.
Go into your browser settings and clear all of your cache and cookie data. In some browsers, you may be able to selectively delete this data so you only have to remove the website affected by the error.
After performing this purge, your browser will re-load all of the site data from scratch on your next visit as if you’d never been there before.
3. Check Your Server Configuration
If you’re still struggling to connect after troubleshooting the local PC, the problem might be in the backend or overall site configuration. A great way to troubleshoot this problem is first inspecting the firewall rule environment.
You can only do this if you’re the site owner or webmaster.
If you aren’t, you’ll need to reach out to the site owner and get them to check for you (you can send them this direct link to this section).
If you’re the site owner, access Cloudflare’s dashboard and log into the site.
From here, you can ensure all of the proper certificates are installed and loaded. You can also verify firewall rules and verify your server is properly configured.
You can confirm if an issue is caused by your firewall by searching for an IP address or domain name in the logging window.
A rule violation triggering error 1020 may be caused by the firewall itself or another application that utilizes it. This can give you clues as to why a site is blocked by “error 1020: access denied.”
Still seeing the “access denied” error 1020 Cloudflare message, and not sure what to do? Try disabling each firewall rule one by one. Only enable those that are needed for critical security and safety.
After you determine which rules are mandatory, disable some of them in an attempt to discover which firewall rule is blocking the safe IP address.
If you want to protect just the portion of your site that is being attacked, disable MWS for the entire domain. Cloudflare page rules can be used to block specific URLs from receiving requests from malicious IP addresses.
4. Contact Cloudflare Support
Since sites can go down for countless reasons, you can contact Cloudflare technical support to check whether there is anything else causing the error message.
It’s important to remember that a web host can negotiate different service levels depending on which plan is contracted. For example, free web hosting plans do not come with access to 24/7 tech support or phone support leaving you helpless when you need assistance the most.
Summary
“Access denied” errors are endlessly frustrating, but typically the fix is pretty simple.
Usually, you can check whether the requester’s cookies are enabled or clear their cache & cookies altogether to get the site to load properly. The Cloudflare proxy logs will give you more details about why a connection was blocked.
If the client’s computer or browser isn’t the issue, try toggling different firewall rules in your Cloudflare server configuration.
Failing these steps, you can always reach out to Cloudflare support for more help. Just remember that if you don’t pay for a support contract, you may not have the full power of their support team available to you.
