4 ms·

Cloudflare hilariously acts as a reverse proxy for booters and does not respond to abuse reports against them.

kyledrake 10y ago
I can confirm that this is true. "Hilarious" is not the word I would use to describe it, "potentially criminal" I think is closer to correct.
- fleitz 10y ago
  I'd call it business savvy.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  They seem to think they have firm legal ground. Keep in mind that most reverse proxies will do the same thing. The only difference with Cloudflare is that you don't know the destination IP.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- driverdan 10y ago
  > potentially criminal Not even remotely. If the government steps in with a subpoena for the origin host IP or an injunction to stop protecting the site they'd stop. Someone on the internet asking them has no legal power to do so.
  - kyledrake 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568256
belorn 10y ago
Why send cloudflare the abuse report rather than the police who are paid by the government to investigate crimes. I have little understanding for this current trend of letting suspected criminals go un-investigated while all focus is on private third-parties that is held up to act police, judge and jury.
- yoo1I 10y ago
  Because one would think that it would be in CloudFlare's interest not to harbour criminals on their network. This logic seems to work almost everywhere else on the internet, including privacy friendly hosters in iceland. It's mostly just CloudFlare who replies to every abuse report with the same "WE R A REVERSE PROXY", no matter what the actual issue that was raised with them was. If they were any smaller, their IP ranges would just go into the rogue-isp-blocklist, and that would be the end of that. But because they're mixing in the criminals with their normal customers, that's not really possible. And since I am unlikely to be in any jurisdiction that CloudFlare is in, nor do I have any chance of finding out who these criminals are because CloudFlare is protecting them, going to the police here wouldn't really achieve much.
  - dec0dedab0de 10y ago
    Because one would think that it would be in CloudFlare's interest not to harbour criminals on their network. It's also not in their best interest to take on the burden of deciding who the criminals are.

I can confirm that this is true. "Hilarious" is not the word I would use to describe it, "potentially criminal" I think is closer to correct.

fleitz 10y ago
I'd call it business savvy.
Dylan16807 10y ago
They seem to think they have firm legal ground. Keep in mind that most reverse proxies will do the same thing. The only difference with Cloudflare is that you don't know the destination IP.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
driverdan 10y ago
> potentially criminal Not even remotely. If the government steps in with a subpoena for the origin host IP or an injunction to stop protecting the site they'd stop. Someone on the internet asking them has no legal power to do so.
- kyledrake 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568256

belorn 10y ago

Why send cloudflare the abuse report rather than the police who are paid by the government to investigate crimes. I have little understanding for this current trend of letting suspected criminals go un-investigated while all focus is on private third-parties that is held up to act police, judge and jury.

yoo1I 10y ago
Because one would think that it would be in CloudFlare's interest not to harbour criminals on their network. This logic seems to work almost everywhere else on the internet, including privacy friendly hosters in iceland. It's mostly just CloudFlare who replies to every abuse report with the same "WE R A REVERSE PROXY", no matter what the actual issue that was raised with them was. If they were any smaller, their IP ranges would just go into the rogue-isp-blocklist, and that would be the end of that. But because they're mixing in the criminals with their normal customers, that's not really possible. And since I am unlikely to be in any jurisdiction that CloudFlare is in, nor do I have any chance of finding out who these criminals are because CloudFlare is protecting them, going to the police here wouldn't really achieve much.
- dec0dedab0de 10y ago
  Because one would think that it would be in CloudFlare's interest not to harbour criminals on their network. It's also not in their best interest to take on the burden of deciding who the criminals are.