I’ve been getting “you do not have permission to access this page” the last several days every time I try to report those Arabic refrigerator spam messages.
This happens to me as well. Usually the thread disappeared afterwards, meaning I tried to report it, but meanwhile it was deleted.
Yeah that’s what I assumed it was but it was still available to view for at least several min after I was denied access to it because I was checking that assumption to see if it was already deleted by the time I hit submit. So then I wasn’t sure if that was the cause.
So it denies reporting it way before it denies viewing it. Maybe their system prioritizes avoiding needless alerts to mods which would make sense. Maybe it’d be better to have “Spam already reported, but thanks” message instead but oh well. 
And I did notice this time that it disappeared only a few minutes later. The other times I just ignored it and didn’t see when it was removed.
I’m guessing here. What you are seeing is a local web browser cache of the original spam message. When you go to report it, it’s already been deleted, but your web browser shows you the version you’ve already seen (instead of reaching out to the server and asking for a new version.) Some browsers let you force a re-fetch of the page.
Ok I encountered this problem again with permission being denied when trying to report spam. I tried in all my browsers(Chrome, Firefox, IE9). Permission was denied on 2 or 3 posts by the spammer but later was not denied and maybe accepted on 2 other posts by this spammer. I didn’t get feedback that it was accepted it just took me back to the thread I reported(accepted?).
This time I kept checking that post in different browsers and deleting my browser history cache refreshing etc. I was denied every time I tried. I tried probably 10 times spaced apart many minutes. The post remained for over 2.5 hours before being deleted. Also the spammer made 5-6 more posts after I was denied, with the last one being over 20min after I was denied permission reporting an earlier post. So it’s not due to a deleted but cached version on my browser and doesn’t appear to be due to an account in the process of being deleted.
I report a lot of spam because I’m up very early(all night really) when the Arabic spam appears and I use the New Posts link all the time and nearly the whole page is Arabic spam threads for maybe 1-3 hours very early in the morning when probably all mods are asleep.
There’s Arabic in the address bar as well on those posts and I’m wondering if the Arabic or the characters it’s converted to are causing problems when going to the server when I’m reporting those spam posts. I have trouble reporting them almost every time. Sometimes I just have to give up, but my hatred of spam is pretty strong so often I keep trying on different posts of the spammer hoping one will accept it.
I can’t confirm that. I never had that exact same issue. I couldn’t report some of them, but the reason was that they were deleted meanwhile. Did you click on “New Posts” again to check whether the post you wanted to report is still present?
Yeah maybe I should have responded on here before they were deleted so others could see if they were denied permission to report the thread, but it was early in the morning so I didn’t think anyone would see my post.
I did want to ensure that the problem wasn’t from the thread being in the process of being deleted so I kept deleting browser cache, history etc., and refreshing the thread and clicking New Posts link and the thread I was unable to report remained alive for over 2.5 hours after I was denied permission before being deleted. And the same spammer account posted several more threads after I was denied, with his last one being over 20 min after I was denied permission on reporting his earlier post.
Sounds weird, indeed!
Ok I’m giving up on reporting spam because of this “Don’t have permission” issue occurring most of the time.
As I said before I’ve seen the link I couldn’t report stay alive 2.5 hours when I was denied permission as well as the spammer posting several more threads after I was denied. So it didn’t appear to be due to the thread already in the process of being deleted.