“This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available” is one of the messages usually seen by web users when trying to access a web page on the www.
From personal experience, I tried accessing a site I had bookmarked the day before and it keeps showing that, this page was accidentally cached by an intermediary error even after several refresh actions.
I cleared the cache of the site and also connected to a VPN but the issue persists. I even went as far as to ask my friends to try accessing the website and it was working fine on their end.
That was when I embarked on finding the fix to the challenge page that has been cached and is no longer available error and luckily I fixed it and that’s what I’m about to share with you.
The “This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available” error is mostly caused when the time and date settings on your phone don’t synchronize with the internet time.
In this article, I’ll explain what the challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available error means and how to resolve the issue on your mobile and desktop.
This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available – Meaning
If you’re not informed, most sites make use of content delivery networks such as Cloudflare to route their traffic to prevent attacks, cache contents and also ensure a secure connection between a visitor and a web page.
Cloudflare makes sure each web visit is human and not bots and as such, they tend to provide a captcha for you to solve on visiting the website.
Also, aside from the captcha verification. It also compares your time to the standard time in your location to make sure you’re not a bot.
So, even if you’re human and you fail to meet any of the other verification criteria, it’ll display the “This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available” error message to you.
This development was just introduced recently and I’m sure it’ll help prevent the rate of site hacking and attacks.
Without wasting much time, let’s see how to lift the error and get access to our favorite website.
This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available – How to Fix
This page error is rarely fixed by refreshing the web page, to get a new captcha challenge and I’ve even confirmed that clearing the cache doesn’t work either.
The main fix is to change your time and date settings to automatic – this will set your time to the date and time provided by your network.
Having known this; here’s how to fix the issue on your mobile and desktop
This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available on Mobile Fix
The below instruction can vary depending on the model of device you are using, I’ll be using a device for the below guide.
- Open the Settings App on your Mobile
- Go to General Management > Date and Time
- Toggle ON the “Automatic Date and Time” option
- Also, Toggle ON the “Automatic Time Zone”
- Try refreshing the website once more and see the magic.
The problem should now be resolved and access to your website should now be resolved. You will also have to solve a few captcha challenges in some cases.
You can also try clearing your cache for the website if you notice further glitches on the website.
Here’s how to go about it…
- Go to your browser setting
- Go to Site Settings > All Sites
- Search for the Site URL and tap on it from the list
- Click on “Clear and Reset”
Viola.
This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available on Windows and Mac Fix
This should work fine for all laptops including Mac and any version of Windows (7, 8, 10, 11)
- Go to your search bar and type “Date and time”
- Click on the “Date and time setting”
- Toggle ON the “Automatic Date and Time” option
- Also, Toggle ON the “Automatic Time Zone”
- You can now refresh the website and it should respond.
That’s all on fixing the “This challenge page was accidentally cached by an intermediary and is no longer available.” Error on your mobile and desktop
Conclusion
If the challenge page on any site has been cached then there’s a possibility that the page was cached by an intermediary, such as a web proxy or a content delivery network (CDN), and the cache has since expired.
This can happen if the page is not accessed for a certain period, or if the cache has reached its maximum size and needs to be cleared to make room for new content.
You need to first clear the Site cache and then proceed to use the date and time provided by your network to fix this problem.
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