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This is an unfortunate view, because Cloudflare is a better actor than most of their listed competitors. And the puzzles you are dealing with are merely setting
by ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is an unfortunate view, because Cloudflare is a better actor than most of their listed competitors. And the puzzles you are dealing with are merely settings that Cloudflare's customers have decided on, based on the assumption of risk based on how you choose to access the web.
Instead of pitching a fit at Cloudflare, encourage and promote positive views of Tor-based browsing, privacy-respecting browser settings, etc. There's an unfortunate reality that people want those Cloudflare settings because they stop a lot of malicious traffic, while allowing the vast majority of legitimate traffic. As we move the window of legitimate traffic to be more privacy-respecting, you'll see the boundaries of such behaviors are forced to adjust.
- techsupporter 6y ago> Instead of pitching a fit at Cloudflare, encourage and promote positive views of Tor-based browsing I don't know if the person to whom you are replying is using Tor, but I'm definitely not and I also despise how Cloudflare--or their customers, but I have no way of differentiating the two--reacts to various things. My home ISP is a very small outfit that mainly serves apartment buildings in my area. I don't know why, but every three or so weeks, Cloudflare decides that my ISP is a massive pile of risk and starts shunting almost every request I make through their "analysing your browser please be patient" screen. It's nothing specific to my computer because if I flip on a tunnel through my server in a colocation service in the same city as me, I get zero prompts. I've worked with my ISP and they've basically given me free reign to assign myself whatever public IP I want out of their /22 (as long as it's not in use by another customer, of course) and, during these times, any IP I choose gets the same response from Cloudflare. It's the same lack of transparency and being able to say "hey, what gives" that applies to spam filtering by the big e-mail providers or getting dropped into the "scam likely" bucket for mobile phone calls. I understand the need to filter and screen and protect but that doesn't mean I have to like it when it splashes onto me.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI am not with Cloudflare, but I'd guess something about traffic from your ISP is causing Cloudflare to be uncomfortable with it. Presumably your ISP could discuss it with Cloudflare?
- techsupporter 6y agoThey claim that they have done so, and that they can't locate any suspicious traffic coming from their network. Of course, these claims might be BS and I've no way to prove or disprove it...
- thefreeman 6y agoIs it really that complicated? Someone else on your ISP is almost definitely sending abusive traffic and it gets your ISP greylisted. Instead of blaming cloudflare you could instead get your ISP to proactively block / ban abusers.
- cortesoft 6y agoDo you think the average user is going to 1) Know that this is what is happening and 2) Have their ISP listen to them?
- wmf 6y agoUsers don't need to be in the loop here. ISPs should monitor their reputation (e.g. by using their own service) and fix it without being nagged.
- cortesoft 6y agoShould, sure. But that doesn’t help their customers who often have no choice for their ISP.
- Nextgrid 6y agoHow do you monitor this in a privacy-respecting manner? Frankly, with HTTPS, how do you monitor this even at all? There's no way as an ISP to tell benign from malicious HTTPS traffic? Does Cloudflare provide something to say "Is my IP considered malicious?" and a way to ask/appeal about any bans?
- johncolanduoni 5y agoBy keeping track of what IP is assigned to a customer and responding to emails sent to the abuse contact on their WHOIS record.
- Nextgrid 5y agoDoes Cloudflare even send abuse reports? Or does their AI just blacklist IP ranges without any notification?
- vinay_ys 6y ago> I've worked with my ISP and they've basically given me free reign to assign myself whatever public IP I want out of their /22 This. If your ISP isn't keeping track of which customer is using which IP addresses and handling complaints sent to their abuse@ etc, then their /22 is likely to have poor reputation.
- moshmosh 6y agoBingo, same thing caught my eye. "You're saying that when you asked them to do something a spammer or criminal might want to do, they just let you? And you say their IP block has a bad reputation? Yes, quite a mystery." [EDIT] though I'm not disputing that it would feel shitty and unfair, for a normal user, to be stuck dealing with CAPTCHAs because of that.
- techsupporter 6y ago> If your ISP isn't keeping track of which customer is using which IP addresses and handling complaints sent to their abuse To be clear, I am the only person (so far as I know) who has the ability to do this. Subscribers are ordinarily segmented by VLAN and the DHCP server hands out a single, predefined IP address on a /30. If a subscriber moves between apartments, their IP goes with them (the VLAN is simply relocated to the new physical port in the new apartment). Which customer has which IP in which apartment is all documented in their customer management system. What they've permitted me to do, as part of testing, is to manually assign myself an IP by removing the VLAN and DHCP restriction on my specific port. If I try to this same stunt in a friend's apartment, on the same ISP, it does not work.
- jleahy 6y agoOut of interest, does that mean they are using 4 IPs per customer? If they're handing out one /30 per customer.
- devit 6y agoBecause Cloudflare for no clear reason allows them to require captchas for pages that are cached anyway and thus where DoS is not a problem, and also in cases where the website is not actively being DoSed at that moment. [of course captchas do nothing against targeted attacks]