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1343 points Hold-And-Modify | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

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.

Show context
windsignaling ◴[] No.42955454[source]
As a website owner and VPN user I see both sides of this.

On one hand, I get the annoying "Verify" box every time I use ChatGPT (and now due its popularity, DeepSeek as well).

On the other hand, without Cloudflare I'd be seeing thousands of junk requests and hacking attempts everyday, people attempting credit card fraud, etc.

I honestly don't know what the solution is.

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inetknght ◴[] No.42955733[source]
> On the other hand, without Cloudflare I'd be seeing thousands of junk requests and hacking attempts everyday, people attempting credit card fraud, etc.

Yup!

> I honestly don't know what the solution is.

Force law enforcement to enforce the laws.

Or else, block the countries that don't combat fraud. That means... China? Hey isn't there a "trade war" being "started"? It sure would be fortunate if China (and certain other fraud-friendly countries around Asia/Pacific) were blocked from the rest of the Internet until/unless they provide enforcement and/or compensation their fraudulent use of technology.

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jeroenhd ◴[] No.42956211[source]
A lot of the fake browser traffic I'm seeing is coming from American data centres. China plays a major part, but if we're going by bot traffic, America will end up on the ban list pretty quickly.
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inetknght ◴[] No.42957032[source]
America does have laws against this kind of thing.

So instead of banning America, report the IP addresses to their American hosts for spam and malicious intent. If the host refuses to do anything, report it to law enforcement. If law enforcement doesn't do anything... then you're proving my point.

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portaouflop ◴[] No.42957421[source]
How are you gonna force law enforcement to enforce the laws?
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1. inetknght ◴[] No.42958550[source]
Thanks for finding my point!