[R-pkg-devel] An invalid URLs

[Ivan Krylov]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2020 09:49:03 +0800 (GMT+08:00)
jared_wood <jared_wood using 163.com> wrote:

>       Status: 403
> 
>       Message: Forbidden
> 
>  
> 
> I don’t know why. The URL was picked up in the article of this
> database and I can open it.

To be fair, my requests to this service are also blocked unless I use
Tor Browser. This could be an aggressive case of GeoIP banning.
(Blocking a well-known university but not blocking Tor exit nodes? Talk
about security theatre.)

Another reason could be that R CMD check uses libcurl with its default
User-Agent: libcurl/A.BB.C to check URLs, and the remote server could
deny requests from such automated user agents, only allowing clients
that look like browsers. I have no data to confirm this hypothesis.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan