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

1343 points Hold-And-Modify | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 19:08 UTC | 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
zlagen ◴[05 Feb 25 19:35 UTC] No.42953898[source]▶
I'm using chrome on linux and noticed that this year cloudflare is very agressive in showing the "Verify you are a human" box. Now a lot of sites that use cloudflare show it and once you solve the challenge it shows it again after 30 minutes!

What are you protecting cloudflare?

Also they show those captchas when going to robots.txt... unbelievable.

replies(17): >>42954054 #>>42954451 #>>42954784 #>>42954904 #>>42955172 #>>42955240 #>>42955949 #>>42956893 #>>42957248 #>>42957383 #>>42957406 #>>42957408 #>>42957698 #>>42957738 #>>42957782 #>>42958180 #>>42960458 #
rurp ◴[05 Feb 25 21:14 UTC] No.42955240[source]▶
Cloudflare has been even worse for me on Linux + Firefox. On a number of sites I get the "Verify" challenge and after solving it immediately get a message saying "You have been blocked" every time. Clearing cookies, disabling UBO, and other changes make no difference. Reporting the issue to them does nothing.

This hostility to normal browsing behavior makes me extremely reluctant to ever use Cloudflare on any projects.

replies(11): >>42955435 #>>42955476 #>>42955584 #>>42956165 #>>42956734 #>>42956862 #>>42957307 #>>42957578 #>>42957641 #>>42958547 #>>42958853 #
mmh0000 ◴[05 Feb 25 22:24 UTC] No.42956165[source]▶
At least you can get past the challenge. For me, every-single-time it is an endless loop of "select all bikes/cars/trains". I've given up even trying to solve the challenge anymore and just close the page when it shows up.
replies(1): >>42957863 #
theamk ◴[06 Feb 25 01:32 UTC] No.42957863[source]▶
that's not Cloudflare, they stopped doing pictures years ago. You can tell because Cloudflare always puths their brand name on their page.

Cloudflare just blocks you without recourse nowdays.

replies(2): >>42957935 #>>42960468 #
1. trinix912 ◴[06 Feb 25 08:56 UTC] No.42960468{3}[source]▶
It is Cloudflare, I see it too. It's a Cloudflare page, with all branding, the spinning circle, then a captcha pops up on the same Cloudflare-branded page.
replies(1): >>42966342 #
2. theamk ◴[06 Feb 25 20:48 UTC] No.42966342[source]▶
Interesting! Do you have have a URL I could look at?