Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#71

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

adra wrote: post #62

SoftTalker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often, just changing the user agent string so that Firefox appears to be Chrome will let those sites work. I.e. they work fine in Firefox, but are restricted by user agent string checks to reject that browser and/or OS. There are several plugins for Firefox that make this easy.

I've used Firefox and Mozilla for what, 20 years? And I've never bumped into a situation like this. Some very clearly shit internal IT systems had pathetic IE requirements, but never one that said sorry go get chrome

They don't always say "go get chrome" but one example that still happens to me is logging in to Outlook email at work, if I use Firefox I get a hobbled "basic HTML" interface, if I masquerade as Chrome on Windows I get the full UI and it all works perfectly.

Google drive is another one, where some things stop working depending on the user agent I'm presenting.

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#72

Post by dingleberry420 » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #51

dingleberry420 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deanonymizing yourself just to appease cloudflare is not a valid solution. Any website should work in any browser out of the box. If they don't, the website is broken.

> If they don't, the website is broken. The Internet is a network with social effects. Whether "this didn't work" means "the website is broken" or "the browser is broken" has always been more about end-user experience and the wisdom of crowds than a more concrete definition. A website broken only on Firefox works for 96.5% of users. I have personally had to make the hard judgment call (as a fan of Firefox!) to not sp…

Right, so you accepted that your website was broken. That can be a valid business decision, but that doesn't not make it broken.

Try this analogy: Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#73

Post by Silhouette » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #24

Aachen wrote: post #2

I mean, with that market share, popularity among open source fans... it's an easy group to target and filter oddballs. I'm a Firefox user and I'm used to this treatment at every step of the way, no matter if it's about software, airports, opening a bank account so I can receive a salary, etc. Fundamental things everyone wants to do are being made hard to do the right way. It's always anti privacy, anti self repair, a…

Really? I'm a firefox user too and whilst I occasionally bump into some situation as you describe where I need to hop onto Chrome, I genuinely can't remember the last time this happened. Nope, actually - sometime last year, with some poorly-coded gig ticket purchase thing, if I remember right. I was able to check the code and amend some stupid niggle in WebDev tools to get around it. Not saying I should have to accep…

I'm a firefox user too and whilst I occasionally bump into some situation as you describe where I need to hop onto Chrome, I genuinely can't remember the last time this happened.

Sadly I find it happens more and more often, even with important things like financial services.

What I haven't figured out yet is whether it's really the Firefox engine that is the problem or just that Firefox also provides better tools for blocking obnoxious trackers and the like. Maybe because I have those tools turned on by default more sites using obnoxious trackers break in Firefox than other browsers. In most cases that is a feature not a bug but it's frustrating when essential functionality on sites providing essential services gets broken as collateral damage.

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#74

Post by mynameisvlad » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

dingleberry420 wrote: post #65

saagarjha wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping to conclusions without much evidence to back it isn't either.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why jump to attacking them? Occam's razor applies, and there's no proof Cloudflare explicitly is targeting Firefox specifically, unless you somehow have internal access to their source and know there's checks explicitly looking for FF there.

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#75

Post by mynameisvlad » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #52

shaicoleman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The blind signing procedure ensures that passes that are redeemed in the future are not feasibly linkable to those that are signed. We use a privacy-preserving cryptographic protocol based on ‘Verifiable, Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions’ (VOPRFs) built from elliptic curves to enforce unlinkability. The protocol is exceptionally fast and guarantees privacy for the user. As such, Privacy Pass is safe to use for those…

Unless you're a mathematician or a cryptographer who's qualified to verify these claims, I think all of this amounts to "trust us."

You have to trust a whole lot of companies to get onto and use the Internet. Or just use everyday technology. I don't see why this is different.

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#76

Post by robonerd » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

dingleberry420 wrote: post #72

shadowgovt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don't, the website is broken. The Internet is a network with social effects. Whether "this didn't work" means "the website is broken" or "the browser is broken" has always been more about end-user experience and the wisdom of crowds than a more concrete definition. A website broken only on Firefox works for 96.5% of users. I have personally had to make the hard judgment call (as a fan of Firefox!) to not sp…

Right, so you accepted that your website was broken. That can be a valid business decision, but that doesn't not make it broken. Try this analogy: Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

It seems as though capitalism has little room for craftsmanship as a virtue. The only value becomes the dollar value, people see no shame in shoddy workmanship so long as it's profitable.

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#77

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #24

Aachen wrote: post #2

I mean, with that market share, popularity among open source fans... it's an easy group to target and filter oddballs. I'm a Firefox user and I'm used to this treatment at every step of the way, no matter if it's about software, airports, opening a bank account so I can receive a salary, etc. Fundamental things everyone wants to do are being made hard to do the right way. It's always anti privacy, anti self repair, a…

Really? I'm a firefox user too and whilst I occasionally bump into some situation as you describe where I need to hop onto Chrome, I genuinely can't remember the last time this happened. Nope, actually - sometime last year, with some poorly-coded gig ticket purchase thing, if I remember right. I was able to check the code and amend some stupid niggle in WebDev tools to get around it. Not saying I should have to accep…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#78

Post by karpierz » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

dingleberry420 wrote: post #72

shadowgovt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don't, the website is broken. The Internet is a network with social effects. Whether "this didn't work" means "the website is broken" or "the browser is broken" has always been more about end-user experience and the wisdom of crowds than a more concrete definition. A website broken only on Firefox works for 96.5% of users. I have personally had to make the hard judgment call (as a fan of Firefox!) to not sp…

Right, so you accepted that your website was broken. That can be a valid business decision, but that doesn't not make it broken. Try this analogy: Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

> Most people have functional legs, so why install a ramp? 99% of your users can access your property, so who cares, right?

People without functional legs can't simply decide to walk up some steps.

People use Firefox can simply decide to use Chrome.

To be more direct; what's your definition of "broken"? Is it that it doesn't work for you in the manner that you'd like?

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#79

Post by lwthiker » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

rezonant wrote: post #25

This is almost certainly a firewall rule put in place by the operators of that site. My own sites which are protected with Cloudflare do not exhibit this behavior when using Firefox.

I think they have different plans and configurations for their anti-bot service [1]. I'm not sure though because I'm not using their services.

[1] https://developers.cloudflare.com/bots/get-started/

Re: Firefox appears to be flagged as suspicious by Cloudflare

#80

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #44

itvision wrote: post #37

I'm using VPN 99.9% of the time, so it's all the same for me. The perks of living in a authoritarian state which tries to limit your access to the Internet.

>The perks of living in a authoritarian state which tries to limit your access to the Internet. Unfortunately these days this could be virtually anywhere.

[deleted]