I totally get it. For about 2 years I was subject to captchas for visiting websites of restaurants. No one else felt what I did because I don't have (never have and will never have) a Facebook account. What that meant for phone users trying to see the menu of 25% of any restaurant - a Facebook captcha. I think the only reason it went away is because I complained about it in hn. I think I got lucky.
CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
41–50 of 182 posts
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean, the internet that allows web property owners to elect to protect themselves from vandalism? That sounds like a powerful use of personal choice to me -- allowed by an internet that (still) allows individuals to make choices in their own best interests.
The problem is that it's often uninformed choice. Some people at LAX, for example, decided that my whole AS has no business accessing their website. (Yes, an international airport blocking international visitors — how cute.) And Cloudflare is the enabler. Notice that you never see Akamai presenting these messages that you've been blocked. Most of these pages where you get blocked are something that looks entirely sta…
Their AS blocking functionality is based on the free "maxmind geoip2 ASN" database, LAX could have chosen to set up a nginx module or site middleware to perform the same block. CF's service offering is making this configuration easier and shifting thinks like having to update the DB onto CF.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#43As someone living in Hong Kong I hate cloudflare. Way too many websites behind cloudflare block hong kong or cause me to have a captcha. This causes me to often route my traffic to my own vpn to counter that which is really annoying.
At least I'm lucky enough that my VPN is for some reason still not detected as a cloud hosting provider by either cloudflare or netflix.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#44The OP has posted a follow-up, but it’s also from 2016:
https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/07/cloudflare-making-inter...
Two things that have changed since then are 1) Cloudflare’s Privacy Pass browser extension and 2) their significant network expansion, both of which would be likely to affect the experience described.
One thing that has not changed, however, is how many (typically unsophisticated) web site operators actively search their logs for signs of suspicious / bot activity and then institute manual blocks in the hope of catching all of them. This is often done with very blunt instruments, such as whole-country blocks.
In contrast, people who are confident about their infrastructure can deal with the background noise of the Internet appropriately—by doing nothing.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
So wait, "we shipped a bug, so we made a browser extension that lets you circumvent the bug". That's cloudflare's answer? I'm not impressed. EDIT: people seem to be confused as to what bug cloudflare shipped. The bug is not having people solve captchas because their IP has a bad reputation. It's having them solve it over and over again . You can put it however you want it, but if my app's UX is fine without cloudflar…
Thwarting denial of service attacks isn’t a bug. You seem to be confused about what your rights are around website availability. Hint: you have no rights. Absent specific coercion by government, the owner of the website had all the rights. If she wants to require you to solve a Where’s Waldo first, that’s her prerogative. Your choice is to accept the terms or go elsewhere.
It's discrimination by country/region.
It's like saying: oh, you are from Africa or Asia. The chance is higher you are a criminal, so do this test first.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#46How is it Google.com doesn’t require captchas to open the home page? Nor does apple.com or any number of massive-traffic sites. The idea that captcha is the best, most effective, or most secure way to protect against DoS is just lazy.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
So wait, "we shipped a bug, so we made a browser extension that lets you circumvent the bug". That's cloudflare's answer? I'm not impressed. EDIT: people seem to be confused as to what bug cloudflare shipped. The bug is not having people solve captchas because their IP has a bad reputation. It's having them solve it over and over again . You can put it however you want it, but if my app's UX is fine without cloudflar…
If captchas are a bug, try running your own popular web service, and good luck keeping away the spam. An extension is easy to install and is a reasonable way for the CDN to verify that you're not a spammer without requiring you to repeatedly prove it whenever your IP changes.
Your comment would make perfect if this whole captcha thing was required in order to post comments.
But they require it for static-like content that any decent site should be serving from cache.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thwarting denial of service attacks isn’t a bug. You seem to be confused about what your rights are around website availability. Hint: you have no rights. Absent specific coercion by government, the owner of the website had all the rights. If she wants to require you to solve a Where’s Waldo first, that’s her prerogative. Your choice is to accept the terms or go elsewhere.
It's discrimination by country/region. It's like saying: oh, you are from Africa or Asia. The chance is higher you are a criminal, so do this test first.
And the problem is worse because, apparently, even solving the captchas repeatedly from a given IP address doesn't make it whitelisted, either. So, it fits the very definition of discrimination against a whole wider group, where the individual actions of any individual actors don't matter.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#49The OP has posted a follow-up, but it’s also from 2016: https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/07/cloudflare-making-inter... Two things that have changed since then are 1) Cloudflare’s Privacy Pass browser extension and 2) their significant network expansion, both of which would be likely to affect the experience described. One thing that has not changed, however, is how many (typically unsophisticated) web site operators…
I think a sizable portion of the small websites that use CF are on so much of a budget that they use a $10/month VPS for hosting then turn to CF for "ddos protection" in order to handle any spikes in traffic that would take down their under-provisioned server. Issue here is that CF's layer 7 flood protection (that's even on the free plans, you can use the rate limiting service for smaller-scale floods) doesn't take effect unless you are really getting hit hard, the cutoff is probably 500 requests per second or more.
When CF fails to protect against the small 30 request per second flood once, they're probably going to go through and add a bunch of aggressive blocks like blocking entire countries, as you've said.
Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that it's often uninformed choice. Some people at LAX, for example, decided that my whole AS has no business accessing their website. (Yes, an international airport blocking international visitors — how cute.) And Cloudflare is the enabler. Notice that you never see Akamai presenting these messages that you've been blocked. Most of these pages where you get blocked are something that looks entirely sta…
Their AS blocking functionality is based on the free "maxmind geoip2 ASN" database, LAX could have chosen to set up a nginx module or site middleware to perform the same block. CF's service offering is making this configuration easier and shifting thinks like having to update the DB onto CF.
And how's that any better? What's the likelihood that LAX would bother to block my AS if it wasn't a simply click courtesy of Cloudflare?
It's like that IBM saying: no-one's been fired for buying IBM. Doesn't make it a good choice, though.