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Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

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Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#161
> I had transferred the domain from Namescheap to cloudflare because I had heard good things about them on here

Mistake number one - to follow the herd :) Mistake number 2 woudl be to use Cloudflare for anything - but that's another topic

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#162
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, if my post wasn't clear. What I meant by mitigating this issue is, I am going to start looking in to other providers and escape routes if I anger the all mighty AI again. I too am really interested in figuring out why I(free) and my clients(paid subscriptions) will trust cloudflare. Mistakes happen, but I can't even imagine my situation if HN didn't come to my aid.

Yeah, I agree it's totally valid to want to avoid the AI ban hammer. I find myself doing it too - e.g. paying cash at stores I would normally never go to, for fear Mastercard thinks it's fraud. I was just saying that it's an egregious enough error that in your shoes I'd be a lot more upset with CF.

The irony in paying cash instead of using your card is that you're likely training their model to be more likely to flag transactions as fraudulent.

This sort of stuff is why explainable AI is IMO important. Assuming the CSR could see _why_ the original domain was flagged by the model as fraud, they could respond in a meaningful way, other than just requiring the OP to go and find someone with more authority than the machine to override the decision.

Unfortunately in these types of situations, getting a satisfying explanation of why something happened is incredibly rare - my understanding is that it's usually at best an educated guess.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#163
One of the worst support experiences I ever had was with Cloudflare. They refused to tell me what I did wrong and demanded sensitive PII over email from as shady address. I moved everything I owned off Cloudflare. For paying customers it might be fine but "free, except it might get randomly nuked" is an awful deal. https://socialism.tools/why-i-ditched-cloudflare-and-you-sho...

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#164
post #8

Hello, I'm the Head of Trust & Safety. Please forward me the email? This is very likely legitimate and from our team, but I'd like to confirm. justin@ cloudflare.com

Justin, is there any plans to change the awful T&S processes Cloudflare has? This thread is full of issues and I experienced something similar, except I got told to email my credit card info to support: https://socialism.tools/why-i-ditched-cloudflare-and-you-sho...

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#165

This sounds like a phishing expedition to provoke you into rash action. Pause. Take a breath. Don't click anything. Try to contact the company via a safe secondary channel like landline telephone and start by politely verifying if they've contacted you by email for any reason in the recent past. If it really is from Cloudflare then they are trash beneath contempt and you should extricate your interests as fast as hum…

All of Cloudflare's actual abuse emails look like phishing emails. They told me to email credit card and my Gov't ID in plaintext to them.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Though not sure who to trust at this point haha... Anyone have other recommendations for where I should keep my domains?

Gandi.net has always lived up to their (literally) no-bullshit reputation for me, and I've pretty much only heard good things about them as a registrar.

I used to have all my domains with Gandi.net One time, they had a billing issue with me. I disputed with my credit card company and got refund. So Gandi.net locked my entire account and none of the sites worked until I paid $10 they charged for disputing "their" billing issue. Only after paying $10 ransom, my account was restored. I promptly moved ALL the domains to porkbun. I also paid for 10 year renewal for my personal website, so someone from porkbun actually called me on the phone to confirm that it was not a mistake on my part and I truly intended to renew my personal website for 10 years. I have been happy with porkbun and would recommend them. Yes, humans at porkbun do manually reply to the emails and answer the phones.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both might be considered morally wrong, but only one seems illegal.

I assure you, targeted persistent harassment is in fact not legal in most countries. With caveats for public figures and failing enforcement.

What do you mean by "most countries"? The only country that matters is the US.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#168
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which violates their registrar agreements: > Registered Name Holders must be able to transfer their domain name registrations between Registrars (Note that sections 3.7-3.9 do allow registrars to deny transfers, f.e. given "evidence of fraud", but given that they reinstated the domains I doubt they have evidence of fraud.) https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transfer-policy-2016-0...

Why does a private corporation get to unilaterally decide something is fraud and seize someone's property? Is this what ownership is supposed to be like?

You never "own" a domain. You just rent it from a registrar, who had permission from ICANN to let you rent it. There is no "good" that you can take with you when you give a registrar money for a domain.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#169
post #35

There is an explanation of what is going on; it might be incomplete, but your account has in some way been flagged for fraud or spam. Maybe someone else is abusing your account, or maybe you have a miss configuration causing this to trigger, but I'd reach out to a service rep. -- I've experienced a near opposite situation: there was a news story about cloudflare providing ddos protection for a number of websites incl…

Sometimes it's worth paying extra to not fund hate. They can offer low prices due to scale, so help someone else reach that scale too. I know I'm paying more but at least I'm not indirectly funding pushing people to suicide.

Growing up in the south, I have yet to see a better advertisement against white supremacy than a klan rally. After image googling "mcinnes own the libs," proud boys makes the klan look PR-savvy. Cloudflare made the right call.

Re: Ask HN: Has Cloudflare blocked your domain without explaining what's going on?

#170
post #8

Hello, I'm the Head of Trust & Safety. Please forward me the email? This is very likely legitimate and from our team, but I'd like to confirm. justin@ cloudflare.com

It’s very disappointing to see the same old big tech false positive “no appeals” failure from Cloudflare. I’m extremely bullish on Cloudflare because I think the way Pages/Functions work with framework adapters is a compelling solution.

Why can’t anyone come up with a solution that keeps this kind of thing from happening? How much does it cost to phone someone before potentially ruining their life and why can’t we simply pay money for that option?

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