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Why would a company that values their users' privacy have Cloudflare man-in-the-middle their traffic in the first place? Cloudflare decrypts the traffic, which

Why would a company that values their users' privacy have Cloudflare man-in-the-middle their traffic in the first place? Cloudflare decrypts the traffic, which in many cases includes personally identifiable information like names, email addresses, transactions, etc. It's hard to imagine something more anti-privacy than allowing a third-party access to all of your users' data. Tor users should take those CAPTCHAs as a sign that they're visiting a web site that they can't use while maintaining their privacy.

Nokinside 8y ago
It's a trade-off. If you trust Cloudflare it adds additional protection against bad guys. If you don't trust them don't use them. Same with Amazon or any other place where you can rent server room. Using Cloudflare gives control for control over which part of their site can use shared cache and which is direct link. If you don't trust anyone, run your own servers and don't hire sysadmins.
- staunch 8y ago
  > ... and don't hire sysadmins. People you hire can be vetted, fired, sued, and even imprisoned for violating your users' privacy. Blindly handing over your users' data to a third-party includes none of these protections. You're simply abdicating responsibility.
  - Nokinside 8y ago
    Okay then. But you must have them on site 24/7 to be able to respond as fast as Couldfare to any new security issues. You must pay them a lots of money because they must be expert level. You also need to have 24/7 security around your servers and all the backups and redundancy. Very few businesses have customer information that is wroth the paranoia and investment to doing everything inhouse.
detaro 8y ago
What hosting is acceptable for your privacy wishes? Given that "a contracted party sees plaintext" is apparently the issue, the following clearly are not ok: a) any SaaS b) any of the cloud providers when their load-balancing offerings are used in HTTP mode (e.g. Amazon ELB) c) any traditional "shared" hosting company Are VPSes trustworthy enough, or does it have to be dedicated hardware? Dedicated hardware under direct control of the company only? And how many companies run those, vs setups falling under a-c) above? I see people make comments like this all the time when it is about Cloudflare, but somehow very seldom if it's about Amazon AWS, Shopify, ..., despite the same caveats applying to those, and it being widely accepted that third-party processing is fine if for a clear purpose and under proper contracts.
- staunch 8y ago
  Yes, options A, B, and C are technologies that shouldn't be used where user privacy is highly valued. They violate the fundamental concept of end-to-end encryption. In practice, a rented VPS or dedicated server that terminates its own TLS connections can be considered very private. It's not impossible for the hosting company to acquire the private key but it would require real effort, business risk, and potential liability. Even if you're not worried about rogue employees, you have to worry about mistakes like the infamous "Cloudbleed" bug that leaked private user traffic.
  - cmorgan31 8y ago
    So avoid using more than 75% of the web? You may be right in that these websites value your privacy less than other things but it certainly doesn't seem like a viable solution for most users. What's the day to day usage look like when you take your privacy this seriously? I'm not well versed with what tools you would use currently to achieve privacy.

Nokinside 8y ago

It's a trade-off. If you trust Cloudflare it adds additional protection against bad guys. If you don't trust them don't use them. Same with Amazon or any other place where you can rent server room. Using Cloudflare gives control for control over which part of their site can use shared cache and which is direct link. If you don't trust anyone, run your own servers and don't hire sysadmins.

staunch 8y ago
> ... and don't hire sysadmins. People you hire can be vetted, fired, sued, and even imprisoned for violating your users' privacy. Blindly handing over your users' data to a third-party includes none of these protections. You're simply abdicating responsibility.
- Nokinside 8y ago
  Okay then. But you must have them on site 24/7 to be able to respond as fast as Couldfare to any new security issues. You must pay them a lots of money because they must be expert level. You also need to have 24/7 security around your servers and all the backups and redundancy. Very few businesses have customer information that is wroth the paranoia and investment to doing everything inhouse.

detaro 8y ago

What hosting is acceptable for your privacy wishes? Given that "a contracted party sees plaintext" is apparently the issue, the following clearly are not ok: a) any SaaS b) any of the cloud providers when their load-balancing offerings are used in HTTP mode (e.g. Amazon ELB) c) any traditional "shared" hosting company Are VPSes trustworthy enough, or does it have to be dedicated hardware? Dedicated hardware under direct control of the company only? And how many companies run those, vs setups falling under a-c) above? I see people make comments like this all the time when it is about Cloudflare, but somehow very seldom if it's about Amazon AWS, Shopify, ..., despite the same caveats applying to those, and it being widely accepted that third-party processing is fine if for a clear purpose and under proper contracts.

staunch 8y ago
Yes, options A, B, and C are technologies that shouldn't be used where user privacy is highly valued. They violate the fundamental concept of end-to-end encryption. In practice, a rented VPS or dedicated server that terminates its own TLS connections can be considered very private. It's not impossible for the hosting company to acquire the private key but it would require real effort, business risk, and potential liability. Even if you're not worried about rogue employees, you have to worry about mistakes like the infamous "Cloudbleed" bug that leaked private user traffic.
- cmorgan31 8y ago
  So avoid using more than 75% of the web? You may be right in that these websites value your privacy less than other things but it certainly doesn't seem like a viable solution for most users. What's the day to day usage look like when you take your privacy this seriously? I'm not well versed with what tools you would use currently to achieve privacy.