Blocked by Cloudflare

Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by llm_nerd on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @03:07PM (#37053980)

It's worth noting that the websites that you are visiting chose Cloudflare, and have enabled the features that irritate you. They have browser integrity enabled, have bot protection enabled, maybe turned the security level up (gitlab famously is a nuisance because they lean heavily on Cloudflare for protection). Sometimes they've wholly barred VPNs or entire geographic areas! And that is entirely the decision of website operators, and note that they did all of this before Cloudflare came along.

Cloudflare's customers are website operators, not you the end user. Those website operators seem pretty pleased with the service, so clearly they are doing a good job for the people who they are building it for.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by warrenm on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @03:21PM (#37054168)

And every Cloudflare customer is a company I won't do business with (unless there is absolutely no way around it)

Cloudflare is running the single biggest, most blatant man-in-the-middle attack in history, and far too many people are happy about it

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by cutler on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @04:18PM (#37054923)

Agreed. The same goes for the 3rd party "data privacy" popups which simply hide a long list of opt-outs several layers deep in a Vendors list. I refuse to use such sites and I let them know by email.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by sophacles on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @04:50PM (#37055266)

In what way is it an attack? (I know what a mitm is, I'm not asking you to explain that - I'm pretty conversant in the concept of a proxy, I'm asking you to explain why it's an attack specifically)

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by warrenm on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @05:03PM (#37055431)

they block and/or slowdown vast swaths of the internet

if that's not an "attack", I don't know what is

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by sophacles on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @05:55PM (#37055968)

I don't get it. They offer a service that that people choose to sign up for and take active steps to use. I don't see how that's an attack. Honestly I'm still trying to understand who is being attacked.

Like is it an attack on the site owner - are you saying cloudflare is extorting them or something? That seems unlikely but I agree that would be a form of attack... it also doesn't seem to be what you're saying.

Is it an attack on the user of the website because the website owner successfully denies visitors it does not want? Does that mean that login credentials are a form of attack too? Would an on-prem load balancer or WAF that dropped all traffic from a region or matching patterns still be an attack?

It just doesn't make sense that it's an attack.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by warrenm on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @09:51PM (#37057844)

They block and/or slowdown over 20% of the internet

How can you not see that as anything but an "attack"?

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by enigmurl on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @10:30PM (#37058063)

Man in the middle attack typically implies an unwanted third party, which in this case is not true since Cloudfare is explicitly and voluntarily trusted by the host server. It wouldn't be all that different if the web server had the browserintegrity checks developed themselves.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by warrenm on Wednesday August 09, 2023 @07:43AM (#37061221)

>an unwanted third party

This is precisely what Cloudflare is doing to end users - causing problems like OP (and myriad others) experience by slowing down and/or blocking major chunks of the internet

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by enigmurl on Wednesday August 09, 2023 @09:18PM (#37070662)

I understand that it may be viewed as unpleasant, but ultimately if you install a proxy on your end that the server does not like (say an ad-blocker), I don't think it would be fair for the server to say its suffering a MITM attack. Likewise, even if the client is not happy with the third party the server is requesting, it still doesn't make sense to call it a MITM, IMO.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by semiquaver on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @10:45PM (#37058142)

The cloudflare customers who benefit from the bot protection do not see it as an attack. On the contrary, they see it as a defense from an attack.

Also, it’s quite disingenuous to label cloudflare as only slowing things down. One of their primary functions is a global CDN/cache which significantly speeds up otherwise bandwidth constrained sites.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by 100110011001 on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @11:35PM (#37058425)

You keep using that word without understanding it. Customers sign up to block huge segments of the internet. That's the opposite of an attack.... Blocking people as intended is the opposite of an attack....

FYI, people are taking you less seriously because of these arguments....

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by 100110011001 on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @11:36PM (#37058433)

FYI, blocking poorly informed people is a feature of Cloudflare.

Learn how ownership and consent works before you keep embarrassing yourself.

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Re:Blocked by Cloudflare by tomwheeler on Wednesday August 09, 2023 @12:57PM (#37065522)

And this is precisely why I don't bother reporting Cloudflare's failures to site operators anymore. I used to do it, when it was pretty infrequent. Site operators were usually concerned that something was blocking customers, but most were clueless about what was causing it or how to fix it.

Eventually I gave up. I don't even bother with their captchas or other stupid human tricks anymore. Whenever Cloudflare gets between me and the site I'm trying to use, I move on and shop somewhere else. Life's too short for this.

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