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Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help?

Hello HN,

The TLDR; 10 days ago I was banned from Cloudflare allegedly for "phishing". I have never phished, nor used Cloudflare to proxy illegal content.

I am a long time HN user but I created a throwaway account to avoid being linked to my employer.

10 days ago I got an email saying my account was suspended for "phishing". I contacted Cloudflare support immediately and within 60 seconds I got a reply saying my account was permanently banned with no further information. I think this was an automated response. I followed up explaining my account had never been used for "phishing" and it hosted a number of small businesses and would they reinstate it. I never got a reply.

My downfall must been related to Cloudflare Workers. I used it to create some apps including proxies that modified mainstream news websites. They acted as uBlock + Stylish for locked down computers where I could not install browser extensions. I did not share these with anyone, but I did not secure them with HTTP auth. I didn't think anyone could guess the xyz.abc.workers.dev URLs to access the proxies but automated software must have detected them and flagged them as phishing sites.

I was too clever for my own good, but I was not malicious, I did not abuse the Cloudflare platform and I never phished. I just created an application for my own personal use. I do not think any Clouldflare engineer looking at my Worker code would think it was malicious in any way. My account had current billing details and I was a paying customer in the past.

Lessons learnt: Don't be clever and security is ALWAYS important.

I would like to continue using Cloudflare. I worry I will be banned from their other services. If I was blocked at an IP level, it would be far more devastating than being permanently blocked by Google.

If anyone can help me, even just to clear my name, I would very grateful to you.

( 28 comments | 64 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by oefrha on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:11AM (#23924627)
> My downfall must been related to Cloudflare Workers. I used it to create some apps including proxies that modified mainstream news websites. They acted as uBlock + Stylish for locked down computers where I could not install browser extensions. I did not share these with anyone, but I did not secure them with HTTP auth. I didn't think anyone could guess the xyz.abc.workers.dev URLs to access the proxies but automated software must have detected them and flagged them as phishing sites

Strange, Cloudflare has an official worker template to do just that (sans modifications): https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/templates/pages/bu... Sounds like officially endorsed use case to me.

In fact I was thinking about doing the same the other day, but haven't gotten around to it...

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by maxk42 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:06AM (#23924595)
Same thing happened to me. Paying account and when I asked what rule I had violated I was directed to the paragraph that said something along the lines of "CloudFlare reserves the right to terminate an account for any reason." It's been a real pain but I'm happy to pay for KeyCDN now.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by eastdakota on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:46AM (#23924489)
I pinged our Trust & Safety team to take another look.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by qot on Thursday July 23, 2020 @04:24AM (#23925309)
Going forward, what changes will you make so that people don't have to make Hackernews posts to get support?
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by xxdesmus on Thursday July 23, 2020 @07:31PM (#23933985)
To be clear -- the website owner can always reply to the email they receive from our Trust & Safety team. That goes directly to our team. This individual could also do that if they had further questions for the team.

Hackernews isn't a necessary route, and quite frankly no changes need to be made to existing policies. The individual could directly reach out team via a reply to the email they received. It seems in this case the person just didn't like the reply they received. That's quite different.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by jjeaff on Thursday July 23, 2020 @09:11PM (#23934604)
So if they didn't like the reply they received, why have they now been reinstated after posting publicly on hn?

Sounds like if nothing is wrong with the policy, then the company is applying the policy inconsistently.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by apple4ever on Thursday July 23, 2020 @11:05PM (#23935283)
Exactly.

Too often these email replies are automated and nobody looks at them. Even more so they briefly look and just say sorry still banned.

Only when it's raised publicly does somebody ACTUALLY look.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by vonseel on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:49AM (#23924496)
OP - I suggest adding some info to your profile or post here so they can identify you? Not sure if you can do that without revealing yourself to everyone else...
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by eastdakota on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:59AM (#23924553)
Yup. What’s domain in question?
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:19AM (#23924676)
I did not delete any of the Workers because I thought that would potentially make me look guilty to CF support. This Worker domain is in my account:

https://ip2.surprise.workers.dev/

The proxy's are also at *.surprise.workers.dev.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:24AM (#23924696)
I ran out of text characters for the post. I am 99% sure none of the sites were compromised / hosting malware and 100% sure they were not hosting illegal or objectionable content.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:16PM (#23933148)
Hi eastdokota, nobody got in touch with me. Could you follow up with the team? Again thank you.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @08:08PM (#23934219)
All sorted :) Thank you.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by econcon on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:55AM (#23924533)
He's the CEO, I doubt there is anyone in company who doesn't know him.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by MattGaiser on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:57AM (#23924540)
vonseel is referring to the poster.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by heavymark on Thursday July 23, 2020 @07:51AM (#23926319)
Was considering moving some domains to CF registrar as have used CF for DNS for myself and clients and love it. But so get terrified that while I would never do anything intentionally to get banned/suspended that if someday was wrongly suspended that there isn’t a clear path to reach a real person to get the issue resolved. I imagine there are an unbelievable number of bad actors and so CF and other providers have to balance that. But for people to feel comfortable using very popular services like CF there needs to be a clear path for people to prove there case and get issues resolved quickly without having to always resort to trending on HN. And hopefully the process would always involve emailing the person first with steps on how to resolve the issue. I have faith CF will be able to improve in this area as they seem to have a brilliant set of people working there.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by shyn3 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:47PM (#23933578)
I highly doubt it will get better as they grow. I think it will get worst actually as it does with most larger organizations.

Even with an enterprise support contract the idea of calling is completely discouraged to the point it's hidden behind menus of finding a customized code to call support. Their e-mail support is a pain also because there are different techs responding with different ideas to solve a question. They don't have chat support which is annoying as well in this day and age. If you want things done, their account management team gets it done fast when on boarding.

Although the product is really good and has some limitations which are annoying but if you can deal without support this is a great product. Also their post postmortems are amazing.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:17AM (#23924663)
Thank you so much! If I breached the ToC, I unreservedly apologize, but no ill intent was intended.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by sonstry on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:00AM (#23924561)
Hello, I am from Cloudflare Trust and Safety. Can you please provide us with the domain name in question ?
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:20AM (#23924684)
Thank you friend. My workers domains are at *.surprise.workers.dev

I did not delete any code or make any changes to avoid looking guilty when CF support took a look at it.

I do plan on deleting the proxies. I am done being clever. I do have some useful workers that I would like to keep.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by sonstry on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:44AM (#23924785)
Thank you. Our team will look into this and get back to you.
[deleted]
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by ThePowerOfFuet on Thursday July 23, 2020 @03:28AM (#23925010)
Wrong account? Or not OP?
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @06:17PM (#23933158)
Hi sonstry, sadly nobody got in touch with me.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @08:08PM (#23934216)
All sorted :) Thank you.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by kohtatsu on Thursday July 23, 2020 @03:57AM (#23925165)
Are you concerned about the lack of recourse through official channels?
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by sergiotapia on Thursday July 23, 2020 @05:40PM (#23932611)
>Lessons learnt: Don't be clever and security is ALWAYS important.

What kind of lesson is that, we wouldn't have the internet as we know if people just followed the rules. If anything this signals that cloudflare is yet another huge company that can just shit on you with little recourse.

Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by throwaway72220 on Thursday July 23, 2020 @08:08PM (#23934226)
Hello again HN, this was kindly all resolved by Cloudflare. Thank you to eastdakota and sonstry for looking into this for me.
Re:Ask HN: Cloudflare incorrectly banned me – can anyone help? by MattGaiser on Thursday July 23, 2020 @01:53AM (#23924516)
The automated contact emails are hilarious. Basically just there to help you scratch an itch to try things.