Fortigate : Getting Web Page Blocked due to ‘An error occurred while trying to rate the web site using the web-filtering service’

Product solution work environment

FortiGate v5.2

FortiGate v5.4

Problem description

This article gives basic advice and steps to follow to resolve fortiguard service issue.

An error may occur while surfing website in your web browser which results in the user seeing a “Web Page Blocked” message when accessing the internet.

This may be caused by:

• Website not getting rating of the FortiGuard Web Filtering feature service.
• Fortigurad communication port may not reachable.
• Need to check Web Filtering license expiration.

Proposed solution

This solution will work those environment here for FortiOS v5.2 and v5.4.

FortiGuard Web filtering is a subscription service.  If the subscription has expired FortiGuard web filtering will stop functioning and effectively give a rating error for every website accessed.

Step 1 Check the fortigurad service license.

Step 2

Go to Security Profiles > Web Filter >Choose the Profile to use >  Rating Options > enable ‘Allow Websites When a Rating Error Occurs’

Step 3

Once this is done test the FortiGuard filtering again.

The port that FortiGuard services use to communicate can be changed from GUI.  Changing this here is also a quick test to see if that had been the problem.  Possibly blocked by ISP.

This port can be either 53 or 8888.  System > Maintenance > FortiGuard webfiltering menu

Need to checks on compliance for port 53 and will block non-DNS standard traffic.

There is some internet service provider may block port 8888 because of as it is a nonstandard port count.

Check with the internet service provider to confirm there is absolutely no port blocking going on.

Still if problem is persist to change post selection to use alternate port 8888 to fortiguard services are reachable via ports 53 and 8888