I hate effing Cloudflare

[Lord Reith]

More and more I am getting this bloody thing "checking my internet connection" when I am browsing websites. It really slows everything down. Seems like more and more websites are using it.

[bobzilla]

You're using a VPN, aren't you? I get the human verification thing pretty consistently when I'm using my VPN, and rarely when I'm not using VPN. They can't steal your information to sell to other companies as easily when you're using a VPN. Stop hurting these poor small businesses. (That last sentence was pure sarcasm, in case it wasn't clear.)

[Ziggy C]

I use a VPN most of the time. I have gotten used to the additional steps taken "for my protection" when surfing the web. I consider we are all still lucky that, for the most part, the internet is free.There may come a time, sooner rather than later, when there will be some serious throttling of internet speed based on how much one is willing to pay for a higher speed and quicker access. I predict that this comes within the next 20 years, but most likely quite sooner than that.

Am I tired of captcha's? You betcha. Small price to pay. For now.

-Z

[harrylime]

It’s not CloudFlare’s fault, they are the number one provider to protect websites from DOS and similar attacks. Call it a security guard or a doorman so to speak. You should hate the ones attacking websites or try to extract content from them.

[Leaping Armadillos]

220 views thus far on this thread. Which means 220 of us thought this was another creative Lord Reith bootleg title.

[Lord Reith]

I use a VPN most of the time. I have gotten used to the additional steps taken "for my protection" when surfing the web.

Yep, every day we are expected to sign over more and more of our privacy to corporations for our own "protection". It's gotten to the point now where they're practically forcing you to hand over a phone number before you do a google search (and that will be coming next,I'll bet... sign into google or no search).

I consider we are all still lucky that, for the most part, the internet is free.There may come a time, sooner rather than later, when there will be some serious throttling of internet speed based on how much one is willing to pay for a higher speed and quicker access. I predict that this comes within the next 20 years, but most likely quite sooner than that.

I don't think it will take 20 years. The internet model is to provide things free at first and then as users grow to gradually cripple functionality until people are forced to pay. That is already in its advanced stages. All the people who are willfully throwing their cds away to stream are playing right into the corporate strategy, because sooner or later you can bet your life we'll start seeing a switch to pay-to-stream models. And then we'll just be back to square one, paying for music through the nose... except we'll be renting it instead of owning.

Then you've got this cloudlare shit trying to stop using people from using VPNs, which are the only protection between the user and the hacker/corporate busybody. I've already found my internet usage has decreased in the last couple of years as more and more hoops are held up for us to jump through. It seems now there is a decided push towards making everybody play the game. You'll do it OUR way or not at all.

Bring back the free internet. Remember how it was 20 years ago? Before these greedy bastards ruined it with their social media and targeted advertising.

[monkeesfan1965]

I remember when ATM (MAC) cards were free too. Once you are addicted and they no longer have other options- POW! WHAM! THUDDD! (Batman visual sound effects here!) I installed cell towers in the late 90's/ early 2000's and resisted having one, until one day in 2006 I went on a cross America trip and discovered that payphones were non existant. George Carlin in the 70's joked about illicit substances... "First time's free!"

[harrylime]

But CloudFlare and the ad-networks are two different parties here. CloudFlare wants to know if you’re a normal user, which you obfuscate using a VPN. So how can you blame CloudFlare for then raising the bar to let you gain access to a website?

It’s like wearing a balaclava everywhere and then blaming security guards for checking if you are not a criminal. If you don’t want that, don’t wear the balaclava/use a VPN. But it’s turning the world upside down to hate the security guards for this. I btw only use VPN’s for very specific situations where their use is actually warranted and when I read people feel they need to use VPN’s for everything, it makes me wonder if they also wear a condom and/or a kevlar vest constantly ‘for their protection’.

Yes I fully agree that the internet has become more troublesome than fun nowadays, but I am not pinning that on one of the good guys still left out there. It’s because of CloudFlare that many websites (or technically speaking their CDN’s) are kept accessible and functional.

[zaval80]

I am in Russia and if it's not my government wanting to prevent me from accessing some file-sharing site like Turbobit or Rapidgator, then it's some site like WeTransfer who think they are more clever than the rest, or (lots of) companies using geofilters. (The funniest case was The Stranglers' site - "they" seem to be against violence, so they block visitors from Russia, but evidently the band's bassist having used karate kicks on some hapless punters is perfectly OK with them.) So far, the simplest VPN-proxy set-up allows me to go everywhere I want and, more importantly, to download everything I want, however large the file or however large the amount of my downloads. Though there are some sites that check for VPN use most ardently. One such example is NitroFlare. I am not able to DL anything from them, however hard I try. Thank goodness, such exclusions are just a few. So from whatever angle one would want to look at the problem, VPN/proxy are the future.

[zaval80]

Yep, every day we are expected to sign over more and more of our privacy to corporations for our own "protection". It's gotten to the point now where they're practically forcing you to hand over a phone number before you do a google search (and that will be coming next,I'll bet... sign into google or no search).

Google is not what one would call a reliable site for search. There are many others which do Google-based search. Also, there are a few non-Google based search sites, like Yandex and maybe Bing (I am not sure if I remember the correct one now). Like, I lined up all search sites I was able to remember - Yahoo, Altavista, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc etc - and searched for some specific download I needed, in FLAC. All that remained was to compare the results visually. The sites which weren't Google-based were the best.