403 "potentially unsafe" error

Hi Bet,

A small number of plugins and themes cause “false positives” in the firewall, where it can block requests that are actually not dangerous.

You can make the firewall learn that these requests are safe by going to the Firewall page on the Wordfence menu, and switching to “Learning Mode,” then completing what you were trying to do. After that, you can change the firewall back to “Enabled and Protecting” and the same requests generally should not be blocked anymore. More details on Learning Mode are available here:
https://docs.wordfence.com/en/Web_Application_Firewall_-_How_to_use_Learning_Mode

When Wordfence’s firewall is installed, it runs in Learning Mode for two weeks, to try to learn about most of these without blocking them, but sometimes that isn’t long enough, depending on how you use the site. If it’s easier, you can choose a date for Learning Mode to end, so the firewall won’t block any requests during that period, and should learn the requests that trigger false positives.

If you try again and Learning Mode corrects the issue, can you also send me a screenshot of the “Whitelisted URLs” table at the bottom of the Wordfence firewall page? We only need the first two columns — the URL and the parameters — if you don’t want to post the whole thing. This will help determine if we need to add these requests to the built-in whitelist or add any special parameters.

-Matt R

Thanks, Matt! I did not find much when searching that error message. It might be really helpful to put the exact error message in your FAQ or info page to help users like me find this info more easily. ??

Hi,

Ok, I’ve added it to the FAQ in the documentation, and will see if I can find other places where it would be helpful to add it, to make it easier to find. Thanks for the feedback!

-Matt R

Today I installed WordPress on sub dictionary of
https://onlinejuction.net and installed WP Super Cache plugin but while trying to modify it says – 403 Forbidden A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site. I am sure it happened so because of Wordfence security plugin. How to ignor sub dictionary path on wordfence and install separately into subdictionary too for security.

bikasgurung, have you tried Matt’s suggestion above about putting the WF Firewall in learning mode?

If that doesn’t solve your problem, then I strongly suggest that you follow forum guidelines and create a new topic specifically for your problem so you can have a better chance of getting help with this.