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Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

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Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#11

Post by Alifatisk »

eszed wrote: post #7
chomp wrote: post #4

Thank god, .tk caused so many headaches for us, truly a cesspit of a tld. The rate of fraud and abuse on our platform was staggeringly high from it, it was close 99%.

It would follow that Cloudflare is tacitly admitting they have been / are hosting a large number of domains used for fraud and abuse. That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse. Anyone care to explain what I'm missing?

Shouldn't be a surprise, there is a tight relationship between Cloudflare and the booter community. I remember every booter site or similar was always behind Cloudflare, I think it was a common practice because it didn't seem like Cloudflare cared about these abusive sites.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#12

Post by KomoD »

eszed wrote: post #7
chomp wrote: post #4

Thank god, .tk caused so many headaches for us, truly a cesspit of a tld. The rate of fraud and abuse on our platform was staggeringly high from it, it was close 99%.

It would follow that Cloudflare is tacitly admitting they have been / are hosting a large number of domains used for fraud and abuse. That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse. Anyone care to explain what I'm missing?

> That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse

What time? What mitigations?

Cloudflare will proxy anything and then tell you "we're just a proxy, so we wont do anything lol" when you report anything other than cf pages. Doesn't matter if it's terror groups, animal torture, piracy, doxing, far right groups, etc.

I have personally submitted abuse reports and seen that absolutely nothing happens.

Oh and also the amount of abuse I see from people using Cloudflare Warp is also very high.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#13

Post by _mlbt »

jamespo wrote: post #8
jackblemming wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that fraud is just going to go away because .tk is gone?

probably not, but very little of value has been lost

I would disagree, I remember as a kid in the late 90s being able to host a website on one of the free hosting providers and then pairing it with a free domain name just made the whole thing that much more special. $10 or so a year for a paid domain name isn't a ton of money, but it can be for a kid with no credit cards and parents that aren't convinced as to why you "need" a domain name.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#14

Post by syuil »

thangngoc89 wrote: post #2

Unrelated to the article but seeing .tk brings back many memories. As a kid without a bank account let's alone an international credit card (VISA/Mastercard), dot.tk is the only way to put a website online with your name. I created countless of websites with .tk for classmates, school and families.

Oh man, this brings back memories from high school!

.tk was a blessing for us.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#15

Post by wizzwizz4 »

estebarb wrote: post #9

Oh, that is why I wasn't able to renew some domains I have used for 10+ years. I'm not even able to upgrade to paid domain. I don't think it will help reducing malware/scams/phishing. But it will hurt students and young people that want to start in en development and aren't able to pay for a domain.

We still have https://nic.eu.org/ and https://freedns.afraid.org/ .

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#16

Post by toddmorey »

I get .tk was popular because it was free and you do need a home for your website that’s portable across providers (not like a .netlify.app sub).

But like we learned from .af, any of these TLDs technically meant for a country need to be considered ephemeral. You are sort of borrowing it without explicit (or lasting) permission.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#17

Post by bombcar »

_mlbt wrote: post #13
jamespo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably not, but very little of value has been lost

I would disagree, I remember as a kid in the late 90s being able to host a website on one of the free hosting providers and then pairing it with a free domain name just made the whole thing that much more special. $10 or so a year for a paid domain name isn't a ton of money, but it can be for a kid with no credit cards and parents that aren't convinced as to why you "need" a domain name.

The problem is that "free for kids" is also "free for scammers" and it's hard to square that circle.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#18

Post by overstay8930 »

The people complaining that Cloudflare hosts these criminals would be the first ones complaining that Cloudflare has too much power when taking down websites it doesn’t like.

You can’t win with these people, I personally think this is the best outcome and shows our systems work (albeit slowly). Sure it took a while, but now there doesn’t have to be a precedent of Cloudflare acting as the internet police more than it has to.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#20

Post by eszed »

KomoD wrote: post #12
eszed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would follow that Cloudflare is tacitly admitting they have been / are hosting a large number of domains used for fraud and abuse. That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse. Anyone care to explain what I'm missing?

> That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse What time? What mitigations? Cloudflare will proxy anything and then tell you "we're just a proxy, so we wont do anything lol" when you report anything other than cf pages. Doesn't matter if it's terror groups, animal torture, piracy, doxing, far right groups, etc. I have personally submitted abuse reports and seen that absolutely no…

I was thinking particularly about the DDoS protections they advertise (and explain in lovely technical posts on this site). So you're saying that they protect their network from others, whilst disregarding harms their clients cause to others. That was something I was missing, so I thank you.
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