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Just tried to browse with the TOR browser my websites (funlabo.com, defouland.com, stratozor.com) which have "Essentially Off" firewall settings on CloudFlare:

Just tried to browse with the TOR browser my websites (funlabo.com, defouland.com, stratozor.com) which have "Essentially Off" firewall settings on CloudFlare: I was indeed greeted by a bit annoying Google Captcha for each domain. That said, I am thankful for the services provided by CloudFlare, notably on the performance side and you do have an option "Off" for this if you pay for an Enterprise plan. I still recommend them.

makomk 11y ago
So if I'm understanding this correctly, CloudFlare offer free CDN and DDoS protection services to websites on the (unmentioned) condition that they make those sites essentially unusable over Tor? Wow. No wonder the Tor developers consider this an attempt to enable mass surveillance.
- pfg 11y ago
  They're not unusable, it just becomes a bit more inconvenient to use them. In my experience, you need to solve 2-3 captchas per site per new circuit (i.e. every 10 minutes, IIRC, although TFA mentions this might have changed recently). Exit node IPs end up on a lot of block lists. This is not specific to CloudFlare. It's in the nature of a project like Tor that some of its users use it for things like comment spam, which is one of the things CloudFlare tries to block. This might very well be what most of their customers want - a lot of non-CloudFlare sites block exit nodes completely. They're also adding a whitelisting feature for those who want to disable those features for Tor users.
- askmike 11y ago
  > on the (unmentioned) condition that they make those sites essentially unusable over Tor Most people don't see it as a condition like this. It's more like your website will be served through the CF network instead of your normal server. This has a lot of effects: increased security (DDOS and others), increased speed (distributed CDN, caching all your static content), (non js) analytics, free SSL (their certs, this was before letsencrypt) etc. A part of that incresed security is blocking traffic from "suspicious" sources, like TOR. Which your average small business with a website has no problems at all with.

makomk 11y ago

So if I'm understanding this correctly, CloudFlare offer free CDN and DDoS protection services to websites on the (unmentioned) condition that they make those sites essentially unusable over Tor? Wow. No wonder the Tor developers consider this an attempt to enable mass surveillance.

pfg 11y ago
They're not unusable, it just becomes a bit more inconvenient to use them. In my experience, you need to solve 2-3 captchas per site per new circuit (i.e. every 10 minutes, IIRC, although TFA mentions this might have changed recently). Exit node IPs end up on a lot of block lists. This is not specific to CloudFlare. It's in the nature of a project like Tor that some of its users use it for things like comment spam, which is one of the things CloudFlare tries to block. This might very well be what most of their customers want - a lot of non-CloudFlare sites block exit nodes completely. They're also adding a whitelisting feature for those who want to disable those features for Tor users.
askmike 11y ago
> on the (unmentioned) condition that they make those sites essentially unusable over Tor Most people don't see it as a condition like this. It's more like your website will be served through the CF network instead of your normal server. This has a lot of effects: increased security (DDOS and others), increased speed (distributed CDN, caching all your static content), (non js) analytics, free SSL (their certs, this was before letsencrypt) etc. A part of that incresed security is blocking traffic from "suspicious" sources, like TOR. Which your average small business with a website has no problems at all with.