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

1343 points Hold-And-Modify | 1 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
randunel ◴[05 Feb 25 20:37 UTC] No.42954747[source]▶
Chromium on linux is also frequently blocked by cloudflare. I can't use tools such as HIBP.
replies(2): >>42954790 #>>42954981 #
wkat4242 ◴[05 Feb 25 20:55 UTC] No.42954981[source]▶
Yeah and Firefox on Linux too. I do have the user agent set to one from Edge because otherwise Microsoft blocks many features in Office 365. Once it thinks it's Edge it suddenly does work just fine. But it doesn't completely fix all the cloudflare blocks and captchas.
replies(1): >>42958789 #
maxk42 ◴[06 Feb 25 03:42 UTC] No.42958789[source]▶
+1 for Firefox on Linux. Several other services (like Instagram) now also accuse me of being a bot every time I legitimately log in with Firefox on Linux.
replies(1): >>42960964 #
1. wkat4242 ◴[06 Feb 25 10:25 UTC] No.42960964{3}[source]▶
Yeah with Instagram I wouldn't be surprised if they just do this to annoy to into using their app. Where they can force timed ads (you have to watch an ad now for a few seconds before it continues).

I noticed another platform (wallapop, a kind of ebay/craigslist here in Spain) that does the same. It never works well in a browser, even in chrome. I think they're just trying to bully their users to their app, which has 30+ trackers in it.