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CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

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Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#51
post #43

As 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.

What do you suggest to the people running websites where 90%+ of the hack attempts come from Hong Kong?

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#52
post #38

As someone who works for a CDN (not CloudFlare), this was certainly interesting to read. It is always good to remember that we owe something to our customers' end users in addition to our direct customers, the website owners. We have to remember that those are real people and not just percentages of traffic that are affected when we make decisions like putting a captcha up against every visitor from certain countries…

If you have a proper website without a gazzilion of useless JavaScript frameworks and custom fonts, there's hardly going to be an unacceptable experience latency-wise even if you have to go all over the world to fetch those resources.

I guess I didn't realize, until another commenter replied, that their traffic was actually blackholed... I thought it just had really bad latency, which they were complaining about.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#53
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting rid of the CDN is not a solution. Why not? The whole everyone-needs-Cloudflare is a made up problem, which depends on many false narratives. And why do we as website visitors have never heard of Akamai, yet it's hard to find anyone who's never seen these captchas from Cloudflare and Incapsula? > Is there a better free CDN for that region? You can only find free mice in mousetraps.

> Why not? The whole everyone-needs-Cloudflare is a made up problem, which depends on many false narratives. I've never seen anyone say "everyone needs cloudflare" except maybe CF itself. > why do we as website visitors have never heard of Akamai Akamai is not free, they have a trial period that is free. It's not in the same space. > You can only find free mice in mousetraps. I don't understand your point. You feel C…

> I don't understand your point. You feel CF is a trap?

Of course it is. If you aren't paying for service, you're not the customer, you're the product.

The whole mandatory TLS campaign is part of the lock-in, too.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#54
Companies like CloudFlare are contributing to the erosion of user privacy in the name of security. I experience the same kind of issues that the author of the article highlights, just because I take some privacy measures. It's my view that so-called security on the Internet, which implies confidentiality, integrity, and availability, is getting increasingly worse for end users. If I want to give up all of my privacy, the Internet is more convenient to use than ever. But for the privacy-conscious user, the Internet is becoming less usable by the day.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#55

Experienced the same during my Asia travels with Cloudflare 2016/2017. Actually that was the biggest reason/negative ad not to consider Cloudflare when choosing a CDN. They simply don't respect Asia and other non first class countries with their standard settings. It's like good Internet only for the rich people in the world! I'm aware on the Chrome extension (really, why should I install this sh&+t on the first plac…

Asia is the #1 attacker of all websites I work with.

Since 100% of the traffic (based on our analysis) coming from Asia is not legitimate business traffic, how would you advise those responsible for these sites security to handle this?

Edit: I have no interest in using Cloudflare...

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#56
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we be building the internet such that a single website can make it effectively unusable for any user at their arbitrary whim?

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.

> web property owners

WTH is this newspeak, just say website owners.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#57
post #11

Not to mention, CloudFlare has become synonymous with hosting and protecting the worst websites on the internet, with currently only two exceptions made, seemingly at the CEO's whim. CloudFlare protects websites dedicated to doxing, stalking and harassing their victims. And when their victims complain, CloudFlare forwards all their personal information directly to said website owners while doing nothing about it. Web…

There are many good reasons to hate Cloudflare.

IMHO, them failing to be the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner for deplatforming inconvenient content aren't quite one of them.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#58

What is the alternative solution here? How do you effectively protect access to websites while simultaneously making sure you never get false positives? I really don't think going back to not having Cloudflare-like services is a step forward. Is there another way?

It's afaik only Cloudflare's way. You don't see that behaviour from Google or Facebook. They really now how to handle the Internet in the "second" and "third world". Cloudflare is like: we don't care about you, you are too poor or a bot. Here is a extension if you are tech-savvy enough to find and install it.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#59

Experienced the same during my Asia travels with Cloudflare 2016/2017. Actually that was the biggest reason/negative ad not to consider Cloudflare when choosing a CDN. They simply don't respect Asia and other non first class countries with their standard settings. It's like good Internet only for the rich people in the world! I'm aware on the Chrome extension (really, why should I install this sh&+t on the first plac…

Asia is the #1 attacker of all websites I work with. Since 100% of the traffic (based on our analysis) coming from Asia is not legitimate business traffic, how would you advise those responsible for these sites security to handle this? Edit: I have no interest in using Cloudflare...

Presumably you have a method to deter attacks that's better than IP-blocking an entire continent, otherwise you'd be utterly hopeless the moment somebody decides to attack from a North American IP.

Re: CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)

#60
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when you hop on a VPN; I kid you not I have to spent literally 20 straight minutes following this bs. It’s infuriating for someone who self-respects their privacy.

Maybe try a personal VPN on digital ocean? You'd be guaranteed a clean IP that only you have access to, as it's very likely CF only flags VPN IPs because some malicious traffic is coming from them. The only issues with this are sites that block the digital ocean ASN (like Crunchyroll).

How many other VPNs are operating out of Digital Ocean?
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