Cloudflare verifing I'm human?

[Mike W.]

I often get these Cloudflare popups when logging in here. Grrr, aggravating as hell. Even more the concept, a Bot wanting me to verify I'm human. But yeah, I get it, I've only been here ~8 years, as opposed to how long it's been here? Hmm, anyone see a disconnect, or at least hypocrisy here? After they set a ton of cookies, so they already have a pretty good idea, but in all likelihood wanting to justify the sale of the Cloudflare product to harass me. I know, their intention is to make money, not provide a good product, and they are probably doing a good job of the former, but a really lousy product. Life is he** when you're the product.

I'd like to put a curse on them, endless, unfiltered, except by a lousy bot no smarter than their own, spam in their inbox. (wow, I must really be evil to suggest a punishment similar to what they're doing to people)

[AZhitman]

This is very unlikely to be site specific, and more likely tied to your browser.

Might try going through your extensions and turning them off one at a time then refreshing the page. In some test cases, there was an extension holding it up. Disabling that extension will prevent multiple checks. I just reviewed our stats and there aren't many of those being served, so unless you're logging in via a VPN with a known "bad neighborhood" address, it's likely a conflict with something in your browser.

CF isn't trying to sell you anything - it's already purchased (by me) for protection against bots and DDOS attacks.

We're working on some new upgrades to make browsing smoother and faster, so don't forget to clear your cache on occasion!

[Mike W.]

I appreciate your work Hitman, and I did look even if I didn't reply for months.

But this came up recently on a BMW forum I'm active on, cloudflare specifically, I whined a bit, I do carry more weight there, and the current tech guy came back with the following in a couple of days,

Yep. I actually had it misconfigured in “under attack mode”. I had set it up this way initially to get things under control because it felt like we were and I was frustrated.

And it's been seamless since then. I don't know what he set things at, I could ask. But tonight I got pinged by email about a post I'd made here, logged on, and by the time I had made a response I had to play the cloudflare game again. 5 minutes? Maybe 10, maybe?

[IanS]

This is very unlikely to be site specific, and more likely tied to your browser.

Might try going through your extensions and turning them off one at a time then refreshing the page. In some test cases, there was an extension holding it up. Disabling that extension will prevent multiple checks. I just reviewed our stats and there aren't many of those being served, so unless you're logging in via a VPN with a known "bad neighborhood" address, it's likely a conflict with something in your browser.

CF isn't trying to sell you anything - it's already purchased (by me) for protection against bots and DDOS attacks.

We're working on some new upgrades to make browsing smoother and faster, so don't forget to clear your cache on occasion!

I get bit with the CF bot check on a handful of different forums when browsing from my phone. Nico is one of the worse offenders, but definitely not alone. I've come to live with it as a sign of the times.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

the current tech guy came back with the following in a couple of days,

Yep. I actually had it misconfigured in “under attack mode”. I had set it up this way initially to get things under control because it felt like we were and I was frustrated.

And it's been seamless since then. I don't know what he set things at, I could ask.

The bots seem to attack forums in waves. When the mod staff can't keep up with swinging the ban-hammer and deleting spam, we often activate the nuclear option. I'm guessing we enabled it and just never shut it back off.
I also have no clue how to confirm that haha.

[Rogue One]

The problem isn't always the forums. I tried logging in this morning not only to this website but a few others and was greeted with an error. I had to use a VPN to bypass Cloudflare's problem server in Miami.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/ar ... 03429.html

Looks like Cloudfare went down entirely today.

[AZhitman]

Correct. I suspect they'll send me $1.29 and half of a ham sammich as reimbursement.