Login error: JSON decode fail, 403 - Forbidden.

Describe the bug Today I tried to login from two different accounts, from different IPs, and received a login error, 429 forbidden.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior: instaloader --login <username> profile nasa

Expected behavior I expected to login and start downloading posts.

Error messages and tracebacks Using above command line, I receive this: Fatal error: Login error: JSON decode fail, 403 - Forbidden.

Using module, I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/instaloader/instaloadercontext.py", line 224, in login
    resp_json = login.json()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/requests/models.py", line 900, in json
    return complexjson.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/__init__.py", line 348, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/ig-login.py", line 57, in <module>
    L.login(USER, PASSWORD)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/instaloader/instaloader.py", line 546, in login
    self.context.login(user, passwd)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/instaloader/instaloadercontext.py", line 228, in login
    ) from err
instaloader.exceptions.ConnectionException: Login error: JSON decode fail, 403 - Forbidden.

Instaloader version 4.7.1

Additional context If I try to login via web or via app, I don’t have any problems. My accounts seem perfectly fine. Also, without logging in, e.g. instaloader nasa I can download posts, so I guess my IP range is not banned.

[twitter-79]

This seems to be a problem with retrieving the csrf token

session.get('https://www.instagram.com/web/__mid/')
csrf_token = session.cookies.get_dict()['csrftoken']

in line 214 of instaloadercontext.py does not work for me while

res = session.get('https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/')
csrf_token = re.findall(r"csrf_token\":\"(.*?)\"", res.text)[0]

is working fine!

[fatpandaclub]

I am a freelancer from India and I am facing no such issues… But one of my clients in France is facing the same issue… Could it be a Geographical issue?? But then again my other scripts which use different Instagram APIs seem to be working fine at his end… Can anyone please help???

I get this error in the EU, but if I set my VPN to India everything works just fine! So thanks for the tip 😃