I need my access to the Ubuntu forums restored

[rifter]

I am not sure where else to take this, so I am sending it to
ubuntu-users mailing list.

As you can see below, I have been having difficulty getting into the
forums.  I did go to #ubuntuforums on freenode and worked with the
people in there. Together we determined that some logic on Canonical's
side is blocking me because of my email address, which is this one.
We were able to test using an address owned by one of the people in
that irc channel.

They gave me the email address I sent to below, but I am not on that
mailing list, so that didn't work. One of the people who I was talking
with there sent a message to - I'm not sure what group it was, but I
believe it was someone at Canonical.

I have been using this email address for probably 10 years now or
more, and for a similar amount of time had that email address in the
forums without a problem.  Not being able to get in is a recent
problem.  I do not think I should have to change my address for this,
and in any case I couldn't. You cannot create a new email address
anywhere these days without buying a cell phone, which I cannot
afford, and even if I could afford it, once you lose access to that
number, anyone who gets that number can have access to your email.
That would make the change suboptimal.

I need to know how I can get some further help with  this, as the
people in #ubuntuforums do not have the access needed to address my
problem directly. I would like to be able to post in the forums, both
to ask my own questions and to help answer those of others.  Thank you
for your time and patience.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rifter <rifter0x0000 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 15:45:58 -0600
Subject: I need my access to the Ubuntu forums restored
To: ubuntu-forums-council at lists.ubuntu.com

Although I have not been very active in the past several months on the
forums, I have had the same email (this one), etc for close to or at
least around 10 years now.  I was able to post this summer, and I got
email from the forums as recently as 10/1/2016 .

As of now, trying to connect to the forums through SSO results in the
following error:

 403 FORBIDDEN You don't have permission to access /login.php on this server.

In discussing the problem with someone in #ubuntuforums on freenode
who was in contact with admins, he suggested that I am being blocked
because of my email address. That seems kind of lame. We tried some
other addresses, though, and could not get it to work. Meanwhile he
set my forum password to a bad password and last I saw he said it was
set to blank, which is even worse.

I am able to get into the SSO at login.ubuntu.com perfectly fine with
the password I set there. We did try setting both passwords the same
with no luck.  I didn't even know that the forums had a separate
password setting, but apparently it does.  IN any case, it is after I
choose to share information to ubuntuforums.org and am redirected
there that I get that error.

https://ubuntuforums.org/login.php?do=login[bunch of other stuff]

In any case, I am hoping someone can help me so I can get back on the
forums and help other people, and get some questions answered with
which I have had trouble.  Thank you for your time and patience.