this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Privacy

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Has avoiding Cloudflare become Impossible? (links.hackliberty.org)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Nearly every website today seems to be hosted behind Cloudflare which is really concerning for the future of privacy on the internet.

Cloudflare no doubt logs, stores, and correlates network telemetry that can be used for a wide array of deanonymization attacks. Not only that, but Cloudflare acts as a man-in-the-middle for all encrypted traffic which means that not even TLS will prevent Cloudflare from snooping on you. Their position across the internet also lends them the ability to conduct netflow and traffic correlation attacks.

~~Even my proposed solution to use archive.org as a proxy is not a valid solution since I found out today that archive.org is also hosted behind Cloudflare...~~ edit: i was wrong

So what options do we even have? What privacy concerns did I miss, and are there any workaround solutions?

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[–] ultranaut 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I was assuming that people knew what they did or would look it up themselves. The short and non-technical answer is "the cloud" actually means "other people's computers" and these companies are the "other people". The why of it is complicated, there are both technical and economic reasons. I think it probably comes down to efficiency and economies of scale.

[–] elbarto777 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Care to elaborate?

So far it seems like it pertains to big sites. So if these cloudfare et al are "impossible to avoid" for any other scanario, I'll be happy to be schooled.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

A quick web search suggests that AWS (Amazon Web Services, I think) hosts 32% of websites. I don't have more nuance to provide other than to agree that these companies provide architecture to a huge portion of the modern internet. Most of everything is held by a small number of companies, just like wealth is concentrated in a small percentage of the population with huge companies owning most of the market.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

AWS is impossible to avoid because there is an incredible amount of stuff on their services. A large portion of websites are hosted there in full or in part. Their various compute services are used by a lot of companies.

AWS is so incredibly big that they are basically "the cloud". There are of course other providers (Microsoft Azure being the second biggest one) but the developed world would be in chaos if they shutdown overnight.

I am not a huge fan of how big they are, but they are obviously doing a good job.

[–] elbarto777 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can avoid them if I stick to sites that don't use them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That seems very hard and inconvenient and a waste of time with no benefit. But you do you.

[–] elbarto777 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wait. You're all whining that using cloudflare has serious privacy issues, in a privacy-related community.

...and when I mention that I prefer not to use cloudflare, it has no benefits?

Then why whine at all?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Read again, I was talking about AWS.

And don't call me "You're all".

I have my opinions and others have their opinions. We are not a hive mind.

Personally I don't care about cloudflare but some do.

But on that note, I will just say good luck avoiding them. Unless you mean avoiding using them on your own website.

[–] elbarto777 1 points 9 months ago

Sorry, you're right, you were talking about AWS indeed, but my point still stands.