Help! I can't access my web site via the web or via sftp! The request times out. What happened?

If you attempt to connect to our servers with an incorrect password more than three times, our servers will temporarily ban your IP address for a few minutes.

We know this is a pain (and can be a cause of extreme stress), however, we've implemented this behavior because our servers are regularly attacked by hackers who make hundreds of login attempts with a dictionary of passwords in an effort to guess a person's login. By banning an IP address that gets more than three attempts wrong, we can virtually eliminate the threat that this type of attack poses.