Cannot remove cookie set by BLC

Hi @website-rob

I hope you are doing well today.

First time we see such report. Did “I have removed the Plugin” was removed manually via FTP without deactivation or you first deactivated plugin from dashboard and removed there as well?

I also pinged our BLC Team to review your query.

Kind Regards,
Kris

Using the dashboard, the plugin was deactivated then removed.

broken-link-css-wrap – cookie-cat is where I learned about the cookie and unless you say otherwise, I will take their information as being correct. The pluginarchive.com site had some posts about this exact issue but the site will not resolve.

Note that I tested similar setups with 2 other sites and could not duplicate this problem. During and after the BLC plugin being active, there was no call to broken-link-css-wrap. Why this is used on just the one site could be due to installing the plugin sometime during 2020. Don’t know what version it was then but it was being updated when new versions came out. Granting access to /wp-json/ dir. by IP address was instituted just recently which is when I became aware of this problem.

Hi @website-rob

Thanks for response!

This is quite strange, I must say. The plugin does use this cookie indeed (it’s an “inheritance” for older versions) but not really to “control” any access and if you cleared cookies in browser and removed the plugin it shouldn’t really be there.

Furthermore, it’s not used to “control” access at any level. The cookie mention in HTTP response also wouldn’t be related to HTTP 403 Forbidden status as “403” is a HTTP header code issues by server (not by browser based on cookies; or by plugin code based on cookies – especially if the plugin is not there).

There’s one additional (and a bit “strange”, I admit) thing that you could try: install plugin again, then go to “Settings -> Link Checker -> General” page, make sure there that all three checkboxes in “Link tweaks” section are not checked, save changes and after removing the plugin back – clear all caches again.

If that doesn’t help here, the reason for the 403 would most likely be different than this cookie or even the Broken Link Checker plugin; but it’s worth to try that first to make sure.

Kind regards,
Adam

Followed your instructions. Upon installing and activating, but no scanning with BLC, these errors were found.

HTTP Requests – upon installing
https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/broken-link-checker.1.11.21.zip.sig 404
https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/broken-link-checker.1.11.21.zip 200

Database – upon activation
error Illegal mix of collations for query UPDATE
error Illegal mix of collations for query INSERT INTO

Both had to do with (utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8mb4_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) the ‘blc_synch’ table with ‘posts’ table.

The database errors were much, much longer and I shortened them to the most relevant info.

Still seeing this as well.

"cookies": [
{
"name": "broken-link-css-wrap",
"value": "0",
"expires": null,
"path": "/",
"domain": null,
"port": null,
"host_only": true
},

I agree this problem is a stumper and appreciate your help in trying to solve it. If this is where our troubleshooting ends then so be it. The Cookie will expire after a year and that will take BLC out of the picture, even if the problem remains.

The new errors, although they have no effect on the site, you might want to look into.

Further investigation showed the problem was created by some function not properly using allocated IP addresses. At what level is undetermined. Could have created by BLC, some other plugin, or even at a higher server level.

Problem was resolved using a Server level iptables rule.

So all is good now. I still recommend and continue to use the Broken Link Checker plugin.

Thanks for sharing the information on what resolved it. I’ll make sure to pass it to our BLC team’s attention so that they are aware of this ticket and if there are any improvements that need to be looked at based on the observation.

Best Regards,

Nithin