Seeing a Captcha screen when you try to access AoS site?

[SuckMyVox]

Edit: The admins appear to have toned down the security settings so it doesn't hit the false positives as much.

So it appears the AoS site operators have added Cloudflare security to their website to protect against computers infected with viruses which is stupid because:

1. The first thing you'll see is a white page that informs you your computer is infected with viruses and botnets and blah, blah, blah SCARY STUFF!!!! It isn't. Cloudflare is a piece of crap security software for websites that is well known for 99.999999% false positives and once in a blue moon maybe a 0.0000001% legit catch.

2. If my computer was infected with a virus it wouldn't infect the AoS website and it's highly unlikely it would be used in a botnet attack against the AoS website. Let's be honest, it would be pointless overkill using a botnet to take down this website. Hackers take down government websites on a routine basis. If they want to hack the AoS site, a captcha screen isn't going to do more than give them an extra chuckle.

3. Cloudflare is well-known for a ridiculous amount of false positives. A quick google and you'll see many site operators have had to shut down Cloudflare completely because it completely locked users out of their website, would unlock them for a few minutes and then lock them out again.

This developer explains the problem perfectly. Not only did Cloudflare constantly block his site's users but it blocked the site's owners as well repeatedly.

One of the ways Cloudflare boosts the speed of your site is to block spam ip's and block people who have infected computers from visting your site. If someone hits your site and is flagged they are asked to enter a captcha to verify they are human.

The first few hours we tried Cloudflare we got alerts that our site had been hacked. People expecting GeekTyrant got a Cloudflare captcha screen; Their site says a customizable screen is coming. The problem is there were so many false positives that we had to turn Cloudflare off after only a few hours.

The largest problem is that our writers including myself could not create posts without seeing a captcha screen every few minutes.

There are countless more web developers describing the exact same problem. In other words, Cloudflare is crap. It's not going to protect AoS from scary, imaginary botnets under your bed, it's just gonna piss off people.

[demo123]

No wonder that the site crashed alot these days.

[TheGrandmaster]

At the moment it is set to high protection, so some false positives are being handed out. The level will hopefully be reduced over time.

[StackOverflow]

CloudFlare provides more than just a layer of security. I can personally say it is very effective and there are a number of security settings to choose from. Obviously the stricter the settings, the more false positives. Saying the entire service is crap based on online reviews (which is exactly what you searched for, what else would you expect?) is a bit silly. The security settings will be modified as necessary. It's quite a useful service in terms of speed and security.

[SuckMyVox]

Well, I don't want to get into a debate but a majority of the reviews I've seen (excepting those written by the company and believe me they write plenty of their own reviews) are at best ambivalent.

And yes, most of the problems with Cloudflare are with it's "high" security settings. But CF is going to continue to spit out false positives regardless of the security level even though it's "intelligent" routing and access log can see you're a normal user. Even on the lowest level it will continue to spit out false positives.

The worst part is when you see the Cloudflare screen it doesn't mention that it's well-known for these false positives, instead it AUTHORITATIVELY informs you that you IN FACT have a virus/botnet installed on your computer. CF does not scan your computer. It simply looks at your ip address and packet requests and if for whatever reason it doesn't like it, it decides your computer is infected.

And if you really want to put into perspective how much of an annoyance Cloudflare is to it's users but blase at best against actual hackers Cloudflare has itself been hacked in the past.

Not only that but Cloudflare directly benefits from these false positives due to revenue from ads on the Cloudflare page when it pops up.

So I'm not trying to bag on your new shiny toy but I'm just saying, take it with a gigantic grain of salt. But if it after using it you find it's working for you or doing what you want it to do then great. What doesn't work for others might work for some.

But if you start having problems (like CF telling you your site is being attacked...when it isn't even being poked), incompatibility with site plugins, more users complaining about false positives, site admins complaining about it (if you haven't trusted yourselves already), slower loading (when it claims to make it faster), *all these things have been reported by CF users*, etc. then consider this a pre-emptive I told you so. :P

[StackOverflow]

Most of the things you are listing are corner cases that apply to any security based service. I have several domains/clients going through cloudflare with no problems, only improvements. Granted I have basic security settings since they are lower profile and haven't had the need. The only negative thing I've heard was for a brief period there were some DNS issues, as expected. Since then, they have been resolved (either overtime or by manually flushing the local DNS cache).

Anytime you read a review, take it with a grain of salt. Don't trust the companies own reviews entirely (obviously). Most of the time people provide feedback, it's namely for negative reasons. So naturally you're going to find a lot of negative reviews.

I'm speaking from myself personally as I've moved about 9 domains over to CloudFlare with no problems (going to be adding more soon), only positive feedback from users. As for security, since I have most of them set to minimal only blatantly obvious attacks and blacklisted requests/signatures are blocked.

[SuckMyVox]

Well, it seems to have stopped getting all in my face every 5 minutes, trying to read/post to the forum so I don't know if you adjusted the settings or if CF finally figured my computer isn't part of some massive botnet but I'll take it.

[UNDERCOVER]

Captcha screens? I don't see any Captcha screens on the AoS website...

[SuckMyVox]

Captcha screens? I don't see any Captcha screens on the AoS website...

Yeah, I think they toned down the security settings on it now.

[UNDERCOVER]

Captcha screens? I don't see any Captcha screens on the AoS website...

Yeah, I think they toned down the security settings on it now.

No, I meant that I never saw Captcha screens on AoS website, even at the time you made this thread.

[SuckMyVox]

Captcha screens? I don't see any Captcha screens on the AoS website...

Yeah, I think they toned down the security settings on it now.

No, I meant that I never saw Captcha screens on AoS website, even at the time you made this thread.

The false positives don't hit everyone but they are very fickle at the high security settings which it was initially on according to Stack.

You have to realize that Cloudflare does not "scan your computer". It only analyzes the packet requests you send to the AoS website, i.e. you: "Show me the website plox." cloudflare: "no, u."

[demo123]

Does cloudflare make this website load slower because that is happening to me. Ever since this cloudflare got added the forums and the whole website started to load slower for me.

[UNDERCOVER]

Does cloudflare make this website load slower because that is happening to me. Ever since this cloudflare got added the forums and the whole website started to load slower for me.

Oddly enough, I've been experiencing this as well.

Sometimes, the website doesn't even load for me.

[HoboHob]

Heck I couldn't get on the site at all for a day.
Sorry for bumping an old thread, but this is a problem.

[SuckMyVox]

Well, the website would go down sporadically sometimes before they installed Cloudflare too.