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Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers

1343 points Hold-And-Modify | 6 comments | 05 Feb 25 19:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.704s | source | bottom

Hello.

Cloudflare's Browser Intergrity Check/Verification/Challenge feature used by many websites, is denying access to users of non-mainstream browsers like Pale Moon.

Users reports began on January 31:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32045

This situation occurs at least once a year, and there is no easy way to contact Cloudflare. Their "Submit feedback" tool yields no results. A Cloudflare Community topic was flagged as "spam" by members of that community and was promptly locked with no real solution, and no official response from Cloudflare:

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/access-denied-to-pale-moo...

Partial list of other browsers that are being denied access:

Falkon, SeaMonkey, IceCat, Basilisk.

Hacker News 2022 post about the same issue, which brought attention and had Cloudflare quickly patching the issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317886

A Cloudflare product manager declared back then: "...we do not want to be in the business of saying one browser is more legitimate than another."

As of now, there is no official response from Cloudflare. Internet access is still denied by their tool.

1. juped ◴[05 Feb 25 20:37 UTC] No.42954752[source]▶
Things like "using Linux" or "having an adblocker at all" get you sent to captcha hell. Anything where you're in the minority of traffic. It's not going to change; why would it?
replies(4): >>42954823 #>>42954997 #>>42955129 #>>42955738 #
2. DoctorOW ◴[05 Feb 25 20:43 UTC] No.42954823[source]▶
I have multiple blockers (Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, Facebook Container) in Firefox and have not experienced this issue.
replies(1): >>42955654 #
3. linuxftw ◴[05 Feb 25 20:56 UTC] No.42954997[source]▶
I have been using Fedora + Firefox for years. I sometimes get a captcha from Cloudflare, but not frequently. Works just fine.

I have not tried less mainstream browsers, just FF and Chrome.

4. jeroenhd ◴[05 Feb 25 21:07 UTC] No.42955129[source]▶
Things are going to chance. Unfortunately, things are only getting worse.

CAPTCHAs are barely sufficient against bots these days. I expect the first sites to start implementing Apple/Cloudflare's remote attestation as a CAPTCHA replacement any day now, and after that it's going to get harder and harder to use the web without Official(tm) Software(tm).

Using Linux isn't what's getting you blocked. I use Linux, and I'm not getting blocked. These blocks are the results of a whole range of data points, including things like IP addresses.

5. maples37 ◴[05 Feb 25 21:45 UTC] No.42955654[source]▶
For what it's worth, this has been my experience as well. I've seen maybe a handful of full-page Cloudflare walls over the past year, and none have gotten me stuck in any kind of loop
6. flyinghamster ◴[05 Feb 25 21:50 UTC] No.42955738[source]▶
For me, captcha hell is very random, and when it happens, it's things like "pick all squares with stairs" where I have to decide if that little corner of a stairway counts (and it never seems to) or "pick all squares with motorcycles" where the camera seemed to have a vision problem.

What usually works for me is to close the browser, reload, and try again.