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Cloudflare took down our website

robindev.substack.com

191–200 of 483 posts

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#191

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

But for $10k a month cloudflare is ok with that? Either it's acceptable or it's not, there is no way that this looks good for cloudflare either way.

That isn't how the world deals with risk.

If you think something your client wants could explode into a liability, you can turn them away or you can just make sure their bill covers your exposure.

If it's a legally questionable service, there's likely to be plenty of abuse contact, or they're going to be a big target of crime, they're going to end up paying more. This is the same reason why some industries (eg porn sites) have always paid more for card processing.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#192

The OP does not give their company nor domain name. I wonder if this is related to recent efforts by the Dutch to collaborate with Cloudflare to prevent online gambling companies operating in the Netherlands. https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/legal/cloudflar...

We do already fully block the Netherlands since a long time ago since their regulations don't allow us to operate there.

The KSA license doesn't sound too unreasonable on the surface. What was the hang-up?

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#193
post #189

Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???

Flags below the [flagged] threshold are invisible but still act to downweight the post.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#195
Huh. Now that was some high-stakes poker right there. It seems the casino knew they were breaking the TOS and paying too little and Cloudflare caught up with that. Then knowing their situation they decided to ask for payment for all the expenses of the previous years (and some extra). In quite passive-aggressive manner.

But the casino still decided to stretch the penny and alas, whoever at Cloudflare was in charge got quite upset their extortion-tactic failed. So they decided to resolve it the American way and kick them out with zero warning - ouch! How fascinating.

I myself like using Cloudflare as it's quite affordable to setup and use. Makes me sad to know they have to resolve to tactics like this to finance their service. Well, at least I don't work in dubious businesses that violate TOS so perhaps I can at least wish for a graceful termination when my Enterprise bill is due.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget to mention that the DDoS traffic causing these issues are also behind cloudflare, but they don't give a damn about them, for obvious business reasons. Cloudflare controls supply and demand, which, by definition of the law, should be classified as extortion.

> should be classified as extortion. It meets the definition of a RICO "enterprise". The question is, will anyone bring it up for judicial review?

Look up "www.crimeflare.org/cfs.html" in the web archive on http port 82.

This guy ran a DNS for years to prove it until he disappeared. Lots of nazi websites, ddoxing sites, crime networks, conspiracy sites, ransomware groups and russian misinformation campaigns that he uncovered.

Honestly I don't see another way to gather the data necessary for this otherwise. You have to have the DNS data to be able to imply intent.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#199
post #189

Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???

Yeah I commented, refreshed and was shocked to see it disappear. It's ironic that we're (reasonably) asking for transparency about a post which is kind of about non-transparency.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#200
As far as I can tell, the issue with this is:

OP runs a casino/gambling site. Gambling is a regulatory mess (I have spent far too long dealing with this as an RNG supplier), and so it's very hard to comply with every jurisdiction, and each one needs you to prove compliance to operate in that jurisdiction.* Gaming companies spend a lot on compliance and tracking, but since the internet is the internet, it's pretty hard to enforce perfectly, so some countries and ISPs take this into their own hands.

Due to that, IPs hosting gambling and gaming sites often get regionally blocked by internet providers or otherwise flagged as hosting illegal content. Those regional blocks consequently affect the reputation score of the IP, and if you are a traffic aggregator like Cloudflare, can cause other customers to have issues. One of the most aggressive and annoying regulatory environments for gambling companies is the US, so it's very possible Cloudflare has had some trouble due to gambling use of their IPs in states in the USA.

Cloudflare wanted them to use the BYOIP features of the enterprise plan, and did not want them on Cloudflare's IPs. The solution was to aggressively sell the Enterprise plan, and in a stunning failure of corporate communication, not tell the customer what the problem was at all. The message from Cloudflare should have been "Enterprise plan + BYOIP or ban, and maybe we'll work with you on price" but it was instead "you would really like the Enterprise plan."

*As an aside - we're lucky in that respect being a tech supplier with relatively uniform rules, but our customers (the gaming companies) get the short end of the stick here.

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