Vaguely related, youtube is lately doing a lot of unnecessary forced logouts & reconfirm password. I'm literally on a static IP. On the same computer & browser. With the same cookies. Not accessing anything particularly sensitive. There is no way in hell they don't know precisely who I am & that its me.
Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
221–230 of 312 posts
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Mobile operating systems with remote attestation (that's both Android and iOS) aren't far off from that with regard to native apps. It doesn't affect the web yet , but Google did propose adding an attestation mechanism to Chrome.
I vaguely remember this from this last year though I can't remember all the details. That's a scary slippery slope.
Of course it'll be presented as a security feature, because users are dumb, whilst also allowing vendors to lock you into their ecosystem; similar to how passkeys are currently being push by these same companies.
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#223I deal with this fairly commonly, presumably because I use linux, and we all know only botnets use linux. Occasionally with cloudflare I'll just get summary rejection and supposed blocking of my IP, but either it's summary rejection or a pass without challenge. Recently I had to deal with this for alibaba just to look at something, which I usually just use torbrowser with, and finally gave up as I couldn't pass the c…
I visited albertsons.com out of curiosity, but I was instantly banned. Even using an unmodified Chromium browser, I couldn't access the site. It's ridiculous what's happening on the internet today.
The error: ``` Access denied Error 16 www.albertsons.com 2025-01-03 09:30:00 UTC What happened? This request was blocked by our security service Your IP: xxx Proxy IP: xxx (ID xxx) Incident ID: XXX Powered by Imperva ```
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#224I deal with this fairly commonly, presumably because I use linux, and we all know only botnets use linux. Occasionally with cloudflare I'll just get summary rejection and supposed blocking of my IP, but either it's summary rejection or a pass without challenge. Recently I had to deal with this for alibaba just to look at something, which I usually just use torbrowser with, and finally gave up as I couldn't pass the c…
I visited albertsons.com out of curiosity, but I was instantly banned. Even using an unmodified Chromium browser, I couldn't access the site. It's ridiculous what's happening on the internet today. The error: ``` Access denied Error 16 www.albertsons.com 2025-01-03 09:30:00 UTC What happened? This request was blocked by our security service Your IP: xxx Proxy IP: xxx (ID xxx) Incident ID: XXX Powered by Imperva ```
Their Imperva WAF usually challenges me repeatedly during use trying to buy groceries from my pc, and most of the time I get tired of having to disable every security extension I use with Firefox to use Albertsons because of their shitty website. Never outright block though.
Might be worth checking some enterprise threat lists for whatever IP's your popping up on (ie Imperva and Cloudflare), or something uniquely fingerprints you from your browser. I use multiple extensions to block whatever they each can, and even I'm not treated that badly as you for wherever you are coming online from.
Here's Fortinet's you can check your IP against, they all tend to roughly use the same lists eventually: https://www.fortiguard.com/iprep
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#225Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#226Now every couple of minutes when scrolling through Reddit, red "Network issue" tab appears. Some comments don't load at all, some are labeled "deleted" even though they aren't. Refreshing the page usually does the trick, but I hate this new experience.
I guess they're just protecting themselves from bots, and I look like a bot in their eyes.
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everything else - no. I'd include _everything_ important in the "yes" category. If I cannot access the customer panel to update settings or notify them of a bug that is affecting me because I'm using Firefox ("works for 95% of users"), they're just not keeping up their end of the contract. Remember, 95% excludes everything but chromium/webkit-engines.
Every SaaS company I’ve worked for has had a compatibility matrix where we say what we support. If we lost customers who were running a highly customized Firefox on Linux, so be it. Every company decides which customers are worth going after.
Yes, sure, but 5% includes stock firefox, zero modifications, zero plugins.
Might still be a business decision, but it's like saying "we'll drop any emails that indicate a mail client other than apple mail/gmail/outlook".
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#228I get this all the time with firefox on linux + ublock origin extension. Often ending up with that blocked ip page.
I mostly shrug off and just avoid visiting that kind of sites again. For an unsubscribe challenge I just copy paste the url and visit it using firefox focus on my smartphone on my mobile connection.
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "residential VPN" providers setup fake ISPs or buy AT&T/Verizon business circuits with large blocks of IPs and sell them as residential. They are easily detected if you are buying IP intelligence from one of the higher quality providers: https://app.spur.us/context?q=STARVPN_PROXY
The linked page shows a sign-in screen.
Spur access requires a free account.
Re: Tell HN: Impassable Cloudflare challenges are ruining my browsing experience
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, StarVPN claims to have "ethically sourced" IPs. That is, not from botnets. Their pricing is quite a bit higher than many (cheapest plan is $20/month), but could be worth trying. https://www.starvpn.com/
The "residential VPN" providers setup fake ISPs or buy AT&T/Verizon business circuits with large blocks of IPs and sell them as residential. They are easily detected if you are buying IP intelligence from one of the higher quality providers: https://app.spur.us/context?q=STARVPN_PROXY
That's helpful to know. I wasn't aware of this.