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Am I wrong for blocking the Cloudflare domain because I assume they are gathering as much as google? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 153 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

If you are actively blocking Cloudflare and you are still able to use the web services you rely on then I am genuinely jealous of you.

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    [–] 59 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    If you set up a website with cloudflare, their user interface has a lot of tracking stuff on by default to be injected into it. It also encourages you to use their https service where the traffic is not actually encrypted from the user to your server, but man-in-the-middle'd by cloudflare. But the interface makes it super easy to do and refers to it like a good and normal default option.

    So yeah I think they really want your data.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (10 children)

    Even if you don't use Cloudflare's https they still need the private keys to work. So they can read all traffic either way.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago* (8 children)

    I'll be more specific: if you set up a website on your own server, and use Cloudflare as a reverse proxy. If you do SSL yourself, on your own server, then the traffic is encrypted between the client and your server, and therefore Cloudflare cannot read it, they do not have the encryption keys, even though the traffic is passing through them. If you use Cloudflare's https solution, Cloudflare provides the keys and decrypts the traffic before passing it on.

    The former is the more secure way to do it, but they encourage you to do it the way where they get to read all the traffic, which is pretty shady of them, because if a website has https people assume that means it is end to end encrypted to the website itself, but that assumption is being violated here and a user has no way to know.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    How can they act as a proxy if they can't terminate the connection? Or what service does that offer?

    I guess they could filter out some connections based on IP addresses. But is that enough for some customers? Or am I overlooking something?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    How can they act as a proxy if they can’t terminate the connection?

    Why wouldn't they be able to? The DNS record points to Cloudflare's IP, they forward the traffic to your server's IP. This is a common choice for self hosting setups because it's a free service and it is a way to avoid pointing a DNS record at your home IP, which you may not want everyone to know. That doesn't require decrypting the traffic.

    How this squares with the ddos protection and caching stuff, I'm not sure, but I know I set up SSL locally, did not give Cloudflare the keys, turned off all the options for them to handle it, and everything seems to work.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You should check the certificate shown to clients when accessing your domain. I think you'll find that it is not the certificate that you created outside of Cloudflare. Cloudflare doesn't need your private key as they issue a certificate for your domain to themselves and use that for the connection with the client. The certificate you created is used between Cloudflare and your server. The only option I'm aware to route traffic through Cloudflare where they don't terminate SSL is an enterprise only feature.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    I checked just to be sure (and debugged some problems while I was at it like the certificate having been expired), the certificate is from Let's Encrypt via certbot.

    Here is how to configure Cloudflare for this (I am using the free version):

    In the settings under SSL/TLS Overview, in "Configure encryption mode", select "Custom SSL/TLS" instead of "Automatic SSL/TLS (default)", and under that select Full:

    Full Enable encryption end-to-end. Use this mode when your origin server supports SSL certification but does not use a valid, publicly trusted certificate.

    Edit: looking into it more, might have been mistaken about how this works

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Please actually compare the certificate when connecting to your server directly (bypassing Cloudflare) and connecting via Cloudflare. An easy way to do this is with openssl CLI:

    openssl s_client -servername your-domain-here.org -connect your-ip-here:443 < /dev/null 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -text -noout

    Replace your-domain-here.org with your domain and your-ip-here with your actual server IP, but also do it with the Cloudflare IP.

    The section about the "Full (strict)" / "Full" is referring to how Cloudflare verifies the certificate (or not in the case of Flexible and off) between your origin server and Cloudflare -- this is not with respect to the client and Cloudflare. The Custom origin certificates are also with respect to Cloudflare and your server (has no impact on certificate used between the client and Cloudflare). Cloudflare still uses a separate certificate that they have issued to themselves and hold the private key to use for the client.

    If you pay extra for their "Advanced Certificate Manager", this allows you to upload a custom certificate to be used between the client and Cloudflare, but you have to provide the private key to Cloudflare because they still terminate SSL/TLS at their servers. Even their "Total TLS" service (part of ACM and the word "Total" could be mistaken to be "total" as in from client all the way to your origin server) does not provide E2EE.

    I may be unaware of a newer service offering, but the only way that I'm aware of to get true E2EE is on their Enterprise plan (Keyless TLS). I have a lot of experience with Cloudflare for both personal and Enterprise plan (I was the technical person in charge of the account and configuring and such). Granted, I've not been dealing with CF enterprise for a few years now and they may have a new service offering outside of enterprise that I'm not familiar with, but my quick look around still looks like everything aside from Keyless TLS requires either giving them the key (in the case of ACM custom certificates) or they use their own certificate for client <-> Cloudflare. When I did manage the enterprise plan, we actually didn't use Keyless TLS because we used features that required them to terminate TLS anyway, so I can't speak to the specifics of it.

    I hope I'm wrong though. I'd love to have true E2EE while still getting the DDoS protection on my personal stuff.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    Yeah, I did ultimately realize this, maybe I should have written a bit more in my edit earlier but it's a bit embarrassing tbh, I had come to some wrong conclusions. I think what I'm going to do is simply stop using Cloudflare for anything that does not have an extra layer of encryption on top of https, or that isn't just a static, public webpage with no interactivity.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    I accedently turned on the orange cloud and mitm myself accedently. It was later some day when I checked my SSL cert that I found google certificate instead of let's encrypt that I realized the traffic is not terminating at my server.

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    • [–] 49 points 4 months ago

    Good luck reaching websites 😂

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    [–] 39 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I suggest you also block anyone using AWS.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I don't think OP would be able to use the modern internet lol

    If they still can then goddam please write a tutorial

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    [–] 33 points 4 months ago

    Reminds me of when my stepmother turned off the router because she didn’t want incoming radiation and then couldn’t figure why her emails were not arriving.

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    [–] 29 points 4 months ago

    I think I'd rather practice other anti-tracking or anti-fingerprinting measures rather than blocking one of the largest CDN's in the world. But yes, they do track.

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    [–] 23 points 4 months ago

    Just blocking the domain won't do you any good. Half the internet is behind Cloudflare. Even some Lemmy servers use it.

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    [–] 20 points 4 months ago

    Lots of stuff breaks when you block cloudflare so a better way to avoid its data collection is to use a vpn and clear your browsing data.

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    [–] 17 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    You won't be able to access 22% of websites, among them many of the largest ones.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yupp it sucks.

    But it does kind of reaffirm that it most likely is collecting just as much data as google. I hate cloudflare and don't understand why the rest of the world wants to be so dependent on a US ran technology firm after waves arms all this

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    • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    As others have mentioned you are going to have a tough time seeing much on the web without it but I guess it would be a good way to see the web with like zero corpo stuff.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    for that reason i block it via uBlock origin because it is an operational reality that i need to see that shit sometimes. the only uBlock origin origin that never gets toggled is wix. that shit can stay the fuck off my screen

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    • [–] 15 points 4 months ago

    This is just turning off your router with extra steps

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    [–] 8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Is this even the privacy forum? A lot of people here implying OP should consent to the spying for better service. Cloudflare absolutely does gather as much as Google, and with much deeper access. If you can go without those websites, then block Cloudflare.

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    • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I have the detect cloudlflare firefox extension. I avoid sites that use it. Haven't tried blocking it completely yet but I could probably manage.

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    [–] 3 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Doesn't Lemmy go down when Cloudflare goes down? Are you currently blocking CF?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Depends on the Lemmy server. So not all of Lemmy goes down.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 4 months ago

    So it looks like I'm only blocking subdomains for the challenges, ajax, and some other CDN stuff. I could try blocking the whole domain for a while and see what happens. It will probably result in the same access since I blocked challenges.

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    • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I block cloudflareinsights.com which my lemmy instance seems to be using lol.

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    [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I am of the habit that I block it globally on the browser. Until perhaps a website that I have to use needs it.

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