You can only ask for a Rescue URL if your IP address is temporarily blocked in the Auto Blocked IP Addresses.
If your IP address is NOT blocked –which is probably the case as the email you received only said you triggered the Administrator Secret URL Parameter, not that the IP was blocked– the rescue URL will do nothing.
Sidebar: If you have forgotten your Administrator Secret URL Parameter you have to either try to access your site enough times to get your IP temporarily blocked (thus making using the Rescue URL feature from your IP address possible), or rename the provider.php file. You can't use the Rescue URL if your IP is NOT blocked, but you just forgot your Administrator Secret URL Parameter. There are very good reasons for this, the major one being that allowing Rescue URL emails without checking for a blocked IP would allow malicious users to flood you with junk Rescue URL emails if they know your email address, which would result in a Denial of Service against your inbox and possibly your site!
If your IP address is permanently blocked (Site IP Disallow List) the Rescue URL will not work as you won't make it to the handler (off the top of my head; I would need to check the code, but I think that's what we had decided when we implemented it a few years back).
The email must be requested from the same IP address that's being currently blocked. If you try to do that from a different IP address (e.g. a different device on a different network, or after your ISP has changed your IP address) it will do nothing at all. That's a security feature to prevent a Denial of Service attack by flooding you with junk rescue URL email messages.
The email address you provide in the URL when requesting a rescue email MUST match exactly the URL of a Super User, including capitalisation. This means that [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] are three different email addresses (that's a Joomla limitation which I personally find wrong). The user the email corresponds to MUST have Super User privileges and be both activated and set up to receive system email. If it's not a Super User, or not activated, no action will be taken. If the user is set up to not receive system email, Joomla will not send an email at all.
The email is sent by your site. Do check your spam and your mail server. I have had at least one server whose anti-spam was so aggressive as to not even deliver the message to my regular spam inbox; it left it in a purgatory of sorts in the third party anti-spam service the host was using. Fun stuff.
The rescue URL is only valid for use from the same browser and IP address that you requested a Rescue URL to be sent to you. The link is only valid for a short period of time (default: 15 minutes). This is a security feature.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
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