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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)

#131

Post by sseveran »

sjwright wrote: post #34
skrebbel wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

I completely agree the website owner has the right to run whatever they want, so thanks for saying that as its something that too often gets overlooked.

At this point I basically refuse to use things with recaptcha or the stupid little cloud flare dots. I just close the tab and move on. I am just so tired of little dots, storefronts, cars, etc...

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

#132

Post by acdha »

boudin wrote: post #121
saagarjha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t make you solve captchas if they have enough information about you to think you’re unlikely to be abusive.

If you're on an ip that is part of a pool they consider unsafe, it's every time. When I use one of my vpns to browse, i end up skipping all websites using cloudfare. This is a lot and it makes you realise how dangerous this situation is. Way too much traffic goes through cloudflare.

Isn’t that like complaining that your insurance costs more if you live in a high theft neighborhood? I mean, it’s not a good situation but if you’re sharing network space with a lot of dodgy activity is the real problem that the site owners wanted protection from those threats or that your network provider doesn’t have an effective abuse management process?

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

#133

Post by libeclipse »

In regards to the accidental censorship of content for users behind VPNs and proxies, on my site I have set the security level to essentially off and disabled any and all integrity checking of visitors. I haven't tested the effect on those users but it should allow anyone to retrieve the pages unmolested.

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

#134

Post by throwaway_bad »

Aeolun wrote: post #116
buro9 wrote: post #115

> Not to mention their free tier doesn’t cover the complex DDOS attacks that you really should be concerned about This wasn't true in 2016 and isn't true in 2019 either. Whilst the system was named and blogged about in Sep 2017 https://blog.cloudflare.com/meet-gatebot-a-bot-that-allows-u... the internal repo has the first working code drop in Feb 2015. The (D)DoS protection systems and team, which I am the Engineerin…

Yeah, that was my first thought when reading this. It’s not that Cloudflare is ruining the internet for you. It’s the loads of illegitimate traffic and attacks that just so happen to originate in your country.

This parallels the conversation going on in the ML world right now.

"They just so happen to look like gorillas!"

This is not okay.

I know it's just a pile of linear algebra and there's no conspiracy to screw a particular country.

But once it's brought up that your system is causing harm by increasing inequality in the world, you can't just say "But that's what the algo is spitting out!".

At least try to fix it.

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

#135

Post by duckvader »

SSL is terminated on CF and website owners are allowing CF to generate SSL Cert and Key for them in free plan. It is a wildcard certificate.

CF has the ability to read/alter the information we are sending to (or receiving from) the actual website. CF also has the ability (I do not mean they do) to impersonate the original website without the owner’s knowledge, and with visitor’s trust.

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

#136

Post by judge2020 »

toast0 wrote: post #60
judge2020 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I know torguard, at least for their wireguard endpoints, operates out of Digital Ocean.

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

#137

Post by acdha »

cnst wrote: post #40
blunte wrote: post #24

There is some presumption that Cloudflare's behavior related to "second class" regions is based on statistics - percentage of traffic that is of ill-intent. Maybe that's not the case, but I suspect so. CF customers probably know that any delays cost viewers/visitors, but losing a few good visitors is worth preventing a ton of bad visitors. And CF generally seems very thoughtful about their actions. If they make somet…

Most properties protected by Cloudflare appear to be webpages that could easily be cached without any ill effects, for hours to days or weeks. Why exactly do they need captcha protection?

Have you done an exhaustive survey of those sites to confirm that they all are completely static? If not, ask yourself how many site operators are going to prefer a global toggle to having to make sure they protect every exposed endpoint, bearing in mind that this has very little impact on a high majority of their customers unless they’re operating a service targeted at VPN users.

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

#138

Post by privateSFacct »

throwaway_bad wrote: post #134
Aeolun wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my first thought when reading this. It’s not that Cloudflare is ruining the internet for you. It’s the loads of illegitimate traffic and attacks that just so happen to originate in your country.

This parallels the conversation going on in the ML world right now. "They just so happen to look like gorillas!" This is not okay. I know it's just a pile of linear algebra and there's no conspiracy to screw a particular country. But once it's brought up that your system is causing harm by increasing inequality in the world, you can't just say "But that's what the algo is spitting out!". At least try to fix it.

If your country is causing harm to the rest of the world by not discouraging (or even encouraging) unethical behavior online, maybe the problem isn't the algo but your system?

At least try to fix it.

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

#139

Post by luckylion »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #129
luckylion wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in Europe and it happens on the website of a European company: make it a GDPR case. If you need to solve a captcha to access the privacy policy, they are clearly in violation.

Can you explain why this is a violation, please?

Privacy policies need to be immediately accessible to users. Hiding your privacy info page behind captchas, using unclear names for links ("service status" as a link to privacy info for example), making users click through multiple pages to find it etc makes you non-compliant.

Basically: you cannot hide the information, you cannot make users jump through hoops (captchas, require signup/login, pay for accessing) to read them.

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

#140

Post by 616c »

privateSFacct wrote: post #138
throwaway_bad wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This parallels the conversation going on in the ML world right now. "They just so happen to look like gorillas!" This is not okay. I know it's just a pile of linear algebra and there's no conspiracy to screw a particular country. But once it's brought up that your system is causing harm by increasing inequality in the world, you can't just say "But that's what the algo is spitting out!". At least try to fix it.

If your country is causing harm to the rest of the world by not discouraging (or even encouraging) unethical behavior online, maybe the problem isn't the algo but your system? At least try to fix it.

Yeah that's cool. Let's classify your personal behavior by your host or birth country and see how you like it.

I see a throwaway account but let us know, what country are you from? Seeing how abusive US behavior is on the internet and in other domains, for me as an American, I'd be afraid to practice what you preach.

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