Beep boop, I’m a bot! I dug through the forum to get you started. I sometimes get things wrong though, so do with this what you will until a human has a look.
No, there isn’t a way around it on free hosting, and there’s no built-in cron to use instead.
What you’re seeing is InfinityFree’s browser security system. It only lets a request through if the client can run JavaScript and keep cookies. cron-job.org can do neither, so it only ever gets the aes.js / __test page and your PHP never starts. That also explains why your log only shows your own browser. The article lists “automated scripts and bots” and webhooks from external services as things that won’t work, and says the system is mandatory and can’t be turned off:
On your questions:
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Does Cron Jobs in the client area bypass this? No. That feature was disabled on 9 August 2023, and the announcement says automated background periodic requests are now prohibited on free hosting. It also says that attempts to reproduce the functionality will be blocked, so a workaround isn’t worth looking for.
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What’s the recommended way to run scheduled PHP tasks? On free hosting there isn’t one. The announcement points to premium hosting, which still has full cron job support, both web crons and PHP commands, with control over the schedule.
If you stay on free hosting, the reminders and backup emails would have to be triggered some other way, for example by a visitor loading a page in a real browser. I haven’t found a source for any other approach.