By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment. Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same. And if you’re using Tor, forget about it.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab. Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image? Also, you’re literally the world’s largest CDN. You’re saying you can’t spare enough of your basically unlimited computational power to let me download a static image you’re probably already cached in every data centre?
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service. And not just in the ISP sense, they control the TLS certificates and can see literally everything you’re sending to or receiving from the website. Including passwords. Including credit cards. Literally defeats the purpose of TLS. And even if the website itself doesn’t use their traffic passthrough service, they infect even more websites with their CDN service, AKA basically one of those old school tracking pixels but holding libraries needed by the site hostage so you can’t block them without breaking the site.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences. As Amy from Futurama said, “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”
By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment
Interesting! I used Firefox for ages and never encountered that issue.
Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same.
Super weird. I’m using Mullvad Browser half the time, never had any such issues. It automatically kills all cookies, has uBlock and NoScript installed, etc. EDIT: oh, yeah, it’s also Firefox-based.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab
What…? I do that literally every day - I handle the service catalogue at work so I need a lot of icons for the hardware and software we provide to users. Just yesterday I downloaded the images for a bunch of Apple hardware, straight from the search results.
Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image?
Other than the fact that I fail to see that “impossible to save stuff” bit - yeah, you should, somewhat. Again: over 60% of traffic is bots, that generates A LOT of traffic. These days a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford hosting a website if they didn’t have services that Cloudflare and similar companies offer.
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service (…)
I don’t know enough about networking to have an opinion on that. I only know that the two network security companies that I follow on socials recommend them. And it’s not “shills shilling”, these are two companies that will take governments and companies to court for threatening user rights.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences
Sure, I get that. But I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor. Can they exfiltrate data from their DNS? Of course. Everybody can. But why would they? If anyone finds out, it effectively kills the entire company, and they don’t do business with personal data - that’s Google’s market. It’s a lot of risk for zero reward, the way I see it.
I seem to remember that they only did after backlash to originally refusing to do so but I wasn’t following it super closely. That’s why I prefaced it with “IIRC”.
Why?
By the fiftieth “your browser is outdated, please upgrade to an up to date browser” on an up to date version of Firefox, but with privacy extensions and on a VPN, yeah forgive me if I harbour some resentment. Not even a captcha challenge half the time, just “you’re not worthy of seeing this website, peasant.” And don’t even think about disabling JS, that gets you blacklisted all the same. And if you’re using Tor, forget about it.
They also block you from loading standalone images, so you can’t download images from search results or even open an image from an article in a new tab. Should I be grateful that they’re saving the website megabytes of server traffic while making it impossible to save stuff offline or use the browser’s zoom tools to get information out of a high resolution image? Also, you’re literally the world’s largest CDN. You’re saying you can’t spare enough of your basically unlimited computational power to let me download a static image you’re probably already cached in every data centre?
Also, they’re literally a man in the middle as a service. And not just in the ISP sense, they control the TLS certificates and can see literally everything you’re sending to or receiving from the website. Including passwords. Including credit cards. Literally defeats the purpose of TLS. And even if the website itself doesn’t use their traffic passthrough service, they infect even more websites with their CDN service, AKA basically one of those old school tracking pixels but holding libraries needed by the site hostage so you can’t block them without breaking the site.
Also also, just because they say their DNS service is “private” doesn’t make it private. Companies have been lying about their privacy policy since privacy policies started being mandated with zero consequences. As Amy from Futurama said, “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”
Interesting! I used Firefox for ages and never encountered that issue.
The VPN “click to confirm you’re human” is annoying but at the same time understandable - 60% of all Internet traffic is bots.
Super weird. I’m using Mullvad Browser half the time, never had any such issues. It automatically kills all cookies, has uBlock and NoScript installed, etc. EDIT: oh, yeah, it’s also Firefox-based.
What…? I do that literally every day - I handle the service catalogue at work so I need a lot of icons for the hardware and software we provide to users. Just yesterday I downloaded the images for a bunch of Apple hardware, straight from the search results.
Other than the fact that I fail to see that “impossible to save stuff” bit - yeah, you should, somewhat. Again: over 60% of traffic is bots, that generates A LOT of traffic. These days a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford hosting a website if they didn’t have services that Cloudflare and similar companies offer.
I don’t know enough about networking to have an opinion on that. I only know that the two network security companies that I follow on socials recommend them. And it’s not “shills shilling”, these are two companies that will take governments and companies to court for threatening user rights.
Sure, I get that. But I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor. Can they exfiltrate data from their DNS? Of course. Everybody can. But why would they? If anyone finds out, it effectively kills the entire company, and they don’t do business with personal data - that’s Google’s market. It’s a lot of risk for zero reward, the way I see it.
IIRC a lot of hate comes from their refusal to blacklist kiwifarms after they bullied several people to suicide.
But… they did blacklist Kiwifarms? In 2022.
I seem to remember that they only did after backlash to originally refusing to do so but I wasn’t following it super closely. That’s why I prefaced it with “IIRC”.
Yes, but someone said they didn’t and since no one ever fact checks, the consensus is that they didn’t, even though they factually did.