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How to Fix the Error 1020 Access Denied on Your Website? (Complete Guide)

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Do you use Cloudflare CDN to load your website content faster for global users? Then, that’s a smart move on your part because a fast-loading website is crucial for survival in the modern digital age.

Cloudflare is a great free CDN service provider. It supports around 20% of Internet traffic as of 2022.

Despite being such an amazing platform, sometimes Cloudflare triggers the Error 1020 Access Denied. It makes your website unavailable for your visitors.

As a result, it can compromise your website’s user experience. Plus, the slow page loading speed can hurt your search engine ranking.

But the good thing is that you can fix the error 1020 with minor modifications in your website settings.

Let’s see how to fix the error 1020 access denied in no time.

What is the Error 1020 Access Denied?

The Error 1020 Access Denied triggers when the Cloudflare firewall rules set on your website are violated.

This happens because your connection request is blocked as you try to access the protected endpoint directly.

The error messages starting with 1 are related to the connection failure.

Usually, when your CDN finds out that IP addresses trying to connect with your site are blocked in the internal settings, the website access is denied.

Such situations can arise due to conflict with your other website settings.

For instance, if you use a robot.text file on some URLs on your website to limit loading requests or keep a few pages out of Google indexing.

In that case, the website access is denied because it is blocked by robot.txt.

You can undo that connection setting to fix the error 1020 access denied.

Why Am I Getting Access Denied On a Website?

Many situations can cause access denied error on your website, such as:

  • Temporary bugs in your system. Sometimes when you last restart your computer or wifi router a while ago, it can get clotted with temporary bugs. So, restart your computer and router to fix all temporary bugs.
  • Browser cache. The website access denied problem could occur due to a corrupted web browser cache. Clear your old web browser history and data to fix this problem.
  • VPN. Do you use Virtual Private Networks to browse the web securely? In that case, you can turn off the VPN on your system. However, it can sometimes block CDN connections for some areas, leading to website access denial.
  • Web browser extensions. In many cases, it is noticed that browser extensions or addons conflict with Cloudflare security settings. Thus, turn off any web browser addon you think can cause the error.

How Do I Fix an Error 1020 Access Denied?

Whether you are a website owner or visitor, you have plenty of options to fix the error 1020 access denied, such as:

Solution 1. Explore All Web Pages

There is a strong chance that you only get the error message on a page.

As I mentioned, many web owners use the robot.txt file to block certain pages from indexing.

Often eCommerce sites block checkout, policy, and other non-essential pages from indexing.

Thus, you see the error message because the website owner has blocked that page.

So, navigate across other pages on the website to ensure there is a real Cloudflare configuration problem.

If you can also see the access denied message on other pages, follow the solutions discussed below.

Solution 2. Restart Your Router & Computer

Simply restarting your router and computer system can fix the access-denied issue.

Since only a few of us often turn off our routers or computers, it keeps a corrupted cache stored in the network data.

As a result, it can conflict with the CDN and ruin your web browsing or user experience.

Thus, restart your computer and router once before trying another solution.

Solution 3. Clear Your Browser Cache

Another easy solution to fix error 1020 access denied is to clear your browser data.

It can help you remove browsing history, cookies, and other passwords.

It can also clear all corrupted data for the particular site.

The process of clearing the cache on every web browser is different.

So you can check the steps online.

Here’s how you can clear the cache on Google Chrome:

Step 1. Go to your Google Chrome > Click on the three vertical dots.

Step 2. Click on More Tools > Clear Browsing Data.

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Step 3. From the Time Range menu, select All Time > Advanced.

Step 4. Tick all the data boxes you wish to remove and click on Clear Data. After that, restart your browser.

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Solution 4. Turn Off Your Browser Extension

Some web browser extensions can conflict with the website network settings, like VPN.

So, you can turn off such an extension to fix the error 1020 access denied.

On Chrome, you can turn off extensions as follows — Click on the three dots > More Tools > Extension > Turn the toggle off.

Solution 5. Use Another Browser

Sometimes the problem is not with your website but your web browser.

So, you can use another web browser to open the website.

You can also use another device to avoid clearing the cache.  

Solution 6. Check Your Cloudflare Settings

If no solution has worked for you, the problem may be in the server.

Thus, you need to access your Cloudflare account and go to settings.

From there, you should check the activity logs to ensure no blocked IP addresses are trying to access your website.

You can also change firewall rules or add IP addresses to grant access to the user unable to access your site.

Other Helpful Tutorials

Here are some other helpful tutorials on fixing web errors that you might encounter while browsing online:

Wrapping Up

The error 1020 access denied is not actually an error.

Many web owners deliberately refuse users and search engine crawlers to access some website pages.

But, when the access denied error message comes without the web owner’s intervention, that’s an issue.

You can follow all the solutions shared above to fix this error.

But if nothing works, you can consult Cloudflare or your web browser technical team to fix this error.

That’s it for now! For more useful tutorials to fix errors, keep on exploring this website.

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