Cannot access MSN Search: 403 error

"A few legitimate queries may get flagged, and for that we apologize."

[directrix]

I don't often use MSN Search, but I just tried to access [search.msn.com...] and to my surprise received (according to the title bar) a 403 error, and the message below. Has anyone else encountered this?

Needless to say, I've not been using malware to abuse MSN; nor do I use phpBB.

We are seeing an increased volume of traffic by some malware software. In order to protect our customers from damage from that malware, we are blocking your query. A few legitimate queries may get flagged, and for that we apologize. Please be assured that we are hard at work on this problem and hope to get it resolved even better as soon as possible.

If you are using phpBB, please check out the phpBB downloads site [URL given] and make sure you are not vulnerable.

- MSN Search Team

[msndude]

There are some people who just want to see how their site is doing for a million of their favorite queries, and they want to know on an hourly basis. This has always been a problem, but we've been getting a bit more aggressive about suppressing it.

If you think we made a mistake in your case, send me a "sticky" with the particulars, I'll be happy to check it out. If we do have a bug, we'd like to know about it.