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Comment by doctorfoo | Hacker News Reader

I can understand not allowing me to post anonymously - but to go as far as refusing me read access? Really?

Actually tackling the problem, hmm. Storing a single cookie on the cloudflare domain so I only have to auth with CloudFlare once, would be better than nothing. I don't like the tracking aspect of that though. Maybe there's some kind of advanced crypto which will solve this in a privacy conscious manner one day.

Unless IPv6 takes off fast more IP addresses are going to be shared. It's simply a terribly crude measure to assume IP address = person.

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> I can understand not allowing me to post anonymously - but to go as far as refusing me read access? Really?

Read access still consumes resources - you may want to read up on what "denial of service" means and check your outrage. CloudFlare sits between you and the host server, and it's their responsibility to cut off DoS attacks before it can affect the host server. Their heuristics may not be perfect but it's not exactly a simple problem to solve.

> Read access still consumes resources - you may want to read up on what "denial of service" means and check your outrage. CloudFlare sits between you and the host server, and it's their responsibility to cut off DoS attacks before it can affect the host server. Their heuristics may not be perfect but it's not exactly a simple problem to solve.

It's hardly rocket science to determine when a DoS attack is occurring based on the overall traffic level. And until it is there is no need for countermeasures.

Blocking of read access is not something I've often experienced before, and certainly not at this scale. Usually it's just one admin blocking an IP here and there, but now, with this job outsourced... To be able to impede an IP from accessing such a huge swathe of sites is a unique and new innovation, and a scary centralisation of power.

The ability to block threats is far greater, sure, but so too is the potential for collateral damage.

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