Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users

I get blocked from websites with some regularity, running Firefox with strict privacy settings, "resist fingerprinting" etc. on OpenBSD. They just give a 403 Forbidden with no explanation, but it's only ever on sites fronted by CloudFlare. Good times. Seems legit.

Also running FF with strict privacy settings and several blockers. The annoyances are constantly increasing. Cloudflare, captchas, "we think you're a bot", constantly recurring cookie popups and absurd requirements are making me hate most of the websites and services I hit nowdays.

I tried for a long time to get around it, but now when I hit a website like this just close the tab and don't bother anymore.

Same, but for VPN (either corporate or personal). Reddit blocks it completely, requires you to sign-in but even the sign-in page is "network restricted"; LinkedIn shows you a captcha but gives an error when submitting the result (several reports online); and overall a lot of 403's. All go magically away when turning off the VPN. Companies, specially adtechs like Reddit and LinkedIn, do NOT want you to browse privately, to the point they rather you don't use their website at all unless without a condom.

I don’t follow the logic here. There seems to be an implication of ulterior motive but I’m not seeing what it is. What aspect of ‘privacy’ offered by a VPN do you think that Reddit / LinkedIn are incentivised to bypass? From a privacy POV, your VPN is doing nothing to them, because your IP address means very little to them from a tracking POV. This is just FUD perpetuated by VPN advertising.

However, the undeniable reality is that accessing the website with a non-residential IP is a very, very strong indicator of sinister behaviour. Anyone that’s been in a position to operate one of these services will tell you that. For every…let’s call them ‘privacy-conscious’ user, there are 10 (or more) nefarious actors that present largely the same way. It’s easy to forget this as a user.

I’m all but certain that if Reddit or LinkedIn could differentiate, they would. But they can’t. That’s kinda the whole point.

Not following what could be sinister about a GET request to a public website.

> From a privacy POV, your VPN is doing nothing to them, because your IP address means very little to them from a tracking POV.

I disagree. (1) Since I have javascript disabled, IP address is generally their next best thing to go on. (2) I don't want to give them IP address to correlate with the other data they have on me, because if they sell that data, now someone else who only has my IP address suddenly can get a bunch of other stuff with it too.