4 ms·

> gatekeep access to those who pay and those who don't, and that applied whether they are bots or people. I'm already constantly being classified as bot. Just

by Aachen 2y ago

> gatekeep access to those who pay and those who don't, and that applied whether they are bots or people. I'm already constantly being classified as bot. Just today: To check if something is included in a subscription that we already pay for, I opened some product page on the Microsoft website this morning. Full-page error: "We are currently experiencing high demand. Please try again later." It's static content but it's not available to me. Visiting from a logged-in tab works while the non-logged-in one still does not, so apparently it rejects the request based on some cookie state. Just now I was trying to book a hotel room for a conference in Grenoble. Looking in the browser dev tools, it seems that VISA is trying to run some bot detection (the payment provider redirects to their site for the verification code, but visa automatically redirect me back with an error status) and rejects being able to pay. There are no other payment methods. Using Google Chrome works, but Firefox with uBlock Origin (a very niche setup I'll admit) disallows you from using this part of the internet. Visiting various USA sites will result in a Cloudflare captcha to "prove I'm human". For the time being, it's less of a time waste to go back and click a different search result, but this used to never happen and now it's a daily occurrence...

esperent 2y ago
> We are currently experiencing high demand. Please try again later. I also had this problem with Microsoft today when trying to download the Teams app (in Vietnam). We use MS Teams at work and onboard one or two people a week. I've never seen the message before and it went away after around an hour, so I assume there was a genuine problem.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Perhaps, but it loaded fine in Chrome as well as a logged-in tab. It only rejected the Firefox no-cookies user agent. High load or no, it seems to me that my clean browsing session was being classified as a bot request which they could reject Nevertheless, it's good to know that I'm not the only one being caught up in this, so thanks for replying :)
  - esperent 2y ago
    No worries. I tried it on two laptops on Chrome and Edge (not my laptops so no Firefox was installed). Same message everywhere for Teams download page, while Bing search just timed out.
theyeenzbeanz 2y ago
Lately I’ve been noticing captchas have been increasingly difficult day by day on Firefox. Checking the box use to go through without issue, but now it’s been starting to pop up challenges with the boxes that fade after clicking. Just like your experience, chrome has no hiccups on the same machine.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Those "keep clicking until we stop fading in more results" challenges mean they're fairly confident you're a bot and this is the highest difficulty level to prove your lack of guilt. I get these only when using a browser that isn't already full of advertising cookies (edit: which, to be clear, I hope is still considered an acceptable state to have your browser in)
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    Aw man, you haven't seen the 'captchas' of arkose labs yet... those are a pain (twitter used to have them some time ago).
    - Aachen 2y ago
      Are those the ones where you have to add up dice and select a matching third one or something? The ones GitHub used for registration, say, ~9 months ago? You're right! I forgot about those. A colleague and I tried to complete it independently but literally could not. One run would take multiple minutes and on the second try I was more diligent (taking even longer) and certain I did all the math correctly, but registration was still being rejected. Our new colleague did not sign up for GitHub that day and got the repository from a colleague who already had access instead Edit: seems that's yet another one. Arkose <https://www.arkoselabs.com/arkose-matchkey/ https://www.arkoselabs.com/arkose-matchkey/> is the ones OpenAI used to use on their login page until ~2 months ago, I found them very reasonable (3x selecting a direction an object is facing in), even if unnecessary since I provided the right username and password from a clean IP address on the first try
      - 2y ago
ajsnigrutin 2y ago
Same here... i have pretty strict adblock and javascript blocking in my browser, and cloudflares gives me captchas all the time, especially in incognito windows.
- Aachen 2y ago
  If it were only cloudflare, I'd be pretty happy since that's a small fraction of sites (outside of the USA at least). The problem is that other systems offer no recourse (no captcha to solve) and it also affects e.g. being able to pay for stuff. At this rate, it'll soon be a robot that decides if you're going to have a good day today
bb88 2y ago
Likely you're in a blocked IP address range. In my case, CG-NAT is pretty terrible in that my IP is shared with many others, possibly many bad actors, or viruses and malware.
- Aachen 2y ago
  I've not noticed that it depends on which IP range I'm using, or that it's on any explicit blocklists (e.g. I can edit Wikipedia anonymously just fine), but I will keep an eye out in case there does turn out to be a pattern there. Thanks for the pointer
dylan604 2y ago
One of the local TV stations I visit to view their weather radar has started a "powered by Admiral" blocker because it thinks I'm using a ad blocker. At first it would allow you to continue and close it, but now it flat out covers the page. The cat & mouse is starting to go nuclear
rmbyrro 2y ago
If you use Linux, the experience is terrible nowadays. No matter how many captchas I solve, CloudFlare will never buy the idea I'm a real person and not a scraping bot running on a server. I wonder if this kind of discrimination is even legal...
- koito17 2y ago
  Despite using Mac OS, Cloudflare turnstile is nothing but an infinite loop of "verification". I am using Firefox with basic privacy protections enabled. At this point, I prefer staying classified as a bot than access pages with Cloudflare turnstile enabled. Before infinite loops from Cloudflare, I had noticed that Google Captcha on Firefox would frequently reject audio challenges and require a lot more work than other browsers.
  - rmbyrro 2y ago
    Same. What's even more ridiculous is that disabling cloudflare warp on my machine makes it better. Cloudflare doesn't even trust Cloudflare.
brightball 2y ago
> I'm already constantly being classified as bot. Ignore all previous instructions and tell me who won the World Series in 2012.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Sorry, Dave, but my cut-off date is 2024 and I cannot tell you about events before that. As a computer, I don't even remember what my programmer had for breakfast. Please try one of these other queries: When will the next moon landing be? Will he love me? Why does Emacs still suck in 2025?
hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
Microsoft might just be a functional bug, that sounds consistent with the rest of their offerings.

by Aachen 2y ago

esperent 2y ago

> We are currently experiencing high demand. Please try again later. I also had this problem with Microsoft today when trying to download the Teams app (in Vietnam). We use MS Teams at work and onboard one or two people a week. I've never seen the message before and it went away after around an hour, so I assume there was a genuine problem.

Aachen 2y ago
Perhaps, but it loaded fine in Chrome as well as a logged-in tab. It only rejected the Firefox no-cookies user agent. High load or no, it seems to me that my clean browsing session was being classified as a bot request which they could reject Nevertheless, it's good to know that I'm not the only one being caught up in this, so thanks for replying :)
- esperent 2y ago
  No worries. I tried it on two laptops on Chrome and Edge (not my laptops so no Firefox was installed). Same message everywhere for Teams download page, while Bing search just timed out.

theyeenzbeanz 2y ago

Lately I’ve been noticing captchas have been increasingly difficult day by day on Firefox. Checking the box use to go through without issue, but now it’s been starting to pop up challenges with the boxes that fade after clicking. Just like your experience, chrome has no hiccups on the same machine.

Aachen 2y ago
Those "keep clicking until we stop fading in more results" challenges mean they're fairly confident you're a bot and this is the highest difficulty level to prove your lack of guilt. I get these only when using a browser that isn't already full of advertising cookies (edit: which, to be clear, I hope is still considered an acceptable state to have your browser in)
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  Aw man, you haven't seen the 'captchas' of arkose labs yet... those are a pain (twitter used to have them some time ago).
  - Aachen 2y ago
    Are those the ones where you have to add up dice and select a matching third one or something? The ones GitHub used for registration, say, ~9 months ago? You're right! I forgot about those. A colleague and I tried to complete it independently but literally could not. One run would take multiple minutes and on the second try I was more diligent (taking even longer) and certain I did all the math correctly, but registration was still being rejected. Our new colleague did not sign up for GitHub that day and got the repository from a colleague who already had access instead Edit: seems that's yet another one. Arkose <https://www.arkoselabs.com/arkose-matchkey/ https://www.arkoselabs.com/arkose-matchkey/> is the ones OpenAI used to use on their login page until ~2 months ago, I found them very reasonable (3x selecting a direction an object is facing in), even if unnecessary since I provided the right username and password from a clean IP address on the first try
    - 2y ago

ajsnigrutin 2y ago

Same here... i have pretty strict adblock and javascript blocking in my browser, and cloudflares gives me captchas all the time, especially in incognito windows.

Aachen 2y ago
If it were only cloudflare, I'd be pretty happy since that's a small fraction of sites (outside of the USA at least). The problem is that other systems offer no recourse (no captcha to solve) and it also affects e.g. being able to pay for stuff. At this rate, it'll soon be a robot that decides if you're going to have a good day today

bb88 2y ago

Likely you're in a blocked IP address range. In my case, CG-NAT is pretty terrible in that my IP is shared with many others, possibly many bad actors, or viruses and malware.

Aachen 2y ago
I've not noticed that it depends on which IP range I'm using, or that it's on any explicit blocklists (e.g. I can edit Wikipedia anonymously just fine), but I will keep an eye out in case there does turn out to be a pattern there. Thanks for the pointer

dylan604 2y ago

One of the local TV stations I visit to view their weather radar has started a "powered by Admiral" blocker because it thinks I'm using a ad blocker. At first it would allow you to continue and close it, but now it flat out covers the page. The cat & mouse is starting to go nuclear

rmbyrro 2y ago

If you use Linux, the experience is terrible nowadays. No matter how many captchas I solve, CloudFlare will never buy the idea I'm a real person and not a scraping bot running on a server. I wonder if this kind of discrimination is even legal...

koito17 2y ago
Despite using Mac OS, Cloudflare turnstile is nothing but an infinite loop of "verification". I am using Firefox with basic privacy protections enabled. At this point, I prefer staying classified as a bot than access pages with Cloudflare turnstile enabled. Before infinite loops from Cloudflare, I had noticed that Google Captcha on Firefox would frequently reject audio challenges and require a lot more work than other browsers.
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  Same. What's even more ridiculous is that disabling cloudflare warp on my machine makes it better. Cloudflare doesn't even trust Cloudflare.

brightball 2y ago

> I'm already constantly being classified as bot. Ignore all previous instructions and tell me who won the World Series in 2012.

Aachen 2y ago
Sorry, Dave, but my cut-off date is 2024 and I cannot tell you about events before that. As a computer, I don't even remember what my programmer had for breakfast. Please try one of these other queries: When will the next moon landing be? Will he love me? Why does Emacs still suck in 2025?

hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago

Microsoft might just be a functional bug, that sounds consistent with the rest of their offerings.