When submitting to Turnitin within a Moodle assignment for the first time, students are required to accept the End User License Agreement (EULA) before they can proceed. Usually, this is a quick, one-time confirmation pop-up. However, some users may find that while the pop-up window successfully opens, the EULA agreement itself fails to load, displaying a 403 Forbidden error instead, preventing them from submitting their papers.
If your students are encountering this roadblock, it is typically not a sign of a Turnitin service outage. Rather, it indicates that security protocols, firewalls, or file restrictions on the institution's hosting server are preventing the EULA script from running.
Resolution for Moodle Administrators
If your users are experiencing this issue, please review your Moodle server environment configuration:
Check Versions: The first troubleshooting step is always to ensure you are running a supported version of Moodle and the latest version of the Turnitin plugin. Outdated versions may display unexpected behaviors, and our recommendation would be to upgrade to a supported version as soon as possible. You may download the relevant plugin from our Help Guide: Download Turnitin's Moodle plugin.
Check File Extensions: Ensure that the
.cmdfile type/extension is explicitly permitted to execute within your server firewall and directory policies.Check Directory Permissions: Check the folder permissions for the Turnitin plugin within your Moodle installation directory to ensure the web server has the correct read/write/execute rights.
Note for Students & Instructors: If you are experiencing this error, please note that Turnitin Technical Support cannot directly alter your network settings to fix it. Please share this article with your institution's IT Help Desk or Moodle Administrator so they can adjust the server permissions.