Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#61

Post by 0xy » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

RKearney wrote: post #19

Cloudflare is a threat to privacy and security with their "Flexible" SSL/TLS option. With the click of a button, Cloudflare will happily strip the TLS connection off your visitors requests and proxy it over plain-text back across the internet to your origin. When I reached out to Cloudflare on this 3 and a half years ago, asking if they could at least inject a header like X-CF-SSL: Flexible or something to indicate t…

Flexible SSL is a measurable security improvement over no SSL at all. I'd argue that end ISPs are far more likely to tamper with or inspect packets than the tier 1 providers between CF and your infra.

So, it's better than nothing. It doesn't make HTTP sites worse.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#62

Post by ksec » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #57

manigandham wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of those small customers have turned into large customers. Clearly their success shows that it's a big market so it's even more strange that there's such a lack of competition.

As near as I can tell, Cloudflare has never turned a profit, so its debatable to what extent they have been a "success". Not every business is comfortable running at a loss indefinitely.

Well Cloudflare is now publicly listed, and as far as I can tell, they are investing far more in growth, hence the loss. And their cash flow is pretty damn good with growing revenue. Not a problem in today's ultra low interest rate. As a matter of fact, it is the preferred model in today's economic climate.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#63

Post by manigandham » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #57

manigandham wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of those small customers have turned into large customers. Clearly their success shows that it's a big market so it's even more strange that there's such a lack of competition.

As near as I can tell, Cloudflare has never turned a profit, so its debatable to what extent they have been a "success". Not every business is comfortable running at a loss indefinitely.

It's a public company with about 80% gross profit margin and growing rapidly. It seems they're taking the best approach in reinvesting to scale as much as possible while they can.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#64

Post by ksec » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

I am actually quite happy with Cloudflare providing this and I have long wonder why they dont do it. Now it is here.

Still waiting for Domain Name Registration.

For those who really want to self host, use something like https://plausible.io

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#65

Post by SamWhited » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

nateberkopec wrote: post #27

SamWhited wrote: post #20

I don't want to diminish the good things Cloudflare has done for privacy on the web, and I welcome alternatives to Google Analytics, but Cloudflare's mission is to get the entire web behind them and give them complete control over all their TLS certificates, traffic, and now analytics. They may be okay right now, but there is absolutely nothing stopping the next CEO, or some future board or big investor group from ch…

People have said this for years, and yet there still isn't a viable competitor to Cloudflare. They still have the best performing and most feature-ful CDN available. The competition is not even that close. Fastly is the only other CDN I could really consider, but their featureset just doesn't compare.

Part of the problem here is that the actual product is flawed, a competitor to Cloudflare that does everything they do would have the exact same problems (it destroys the entire security model of the web). Instead, use another CDN (there are plenty of those), and another DDoS protection, and remember that just because they're cheap doesn't mean you're not paying with something other than money.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#66

Post by SamWhited » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

dev_cprice wrote: post #29

SamWhited wrote: post #20

I don't want to diminish the good things Cloudflare has done for privacy on the web, and I welcome alternatives to Google Analytics, but Cloudflare's mission is to get the entire web behind them and give them complete control over all their TLS certificates, traffic, and now analytics. They may be okay right now, but there is absolutely nothing stopping the next CEO, or some future board or big investor group from ch…

Is good competition in this space ever a _bad thing_? inb4 capitalism bad arguments. I think that if ${BAD_POLICY} happens, a competitive market will produce a new "cloudflare"-like company that eats their lunch. There's a reason why GA has so many privacy focused competing apps, e.g. Fathom or Matomo.

Competition is fine, the problem is a mix of vertical integration (which is generally anti-competitive) and that their entire product just destroys the security model of the web.