Any Brave users (desktop only) ? Cloudflare

[Tisy]

I moved to Brave from Chrome around 6 months ago due to one site in particular becoming unusable on Chrome after some so-called enhancements which turned it in CPU and RAM-guzzling slide-show when moving around the map. Oddly, despite the same engine under the hood, the site was smooth as silk in Brave.

I'm happy to concede this may be a PICNIC issue, but from reading the Brave support forums I'm definitely not alone : about half of the sites and pages I go to stop me in my tracks wanting me to complete a Cloudflare human check. I can tolerate the occasional check so long as it buggers off and doesn't ask again, but over recent weeks I'm finding that sites which worked fine, now are stuck in an infinite Cloudflare human check loop and never let me pass. I've tried it with Shield on/off, cookies/fingerprinting on/off, Cloudflare DNS, uBlock Origin on/off. None of it makes any difference, yet the same sites work just fine in Chrome 99% of the time and they both use the same engine, so what's going on? Is Brave basically banned by the Cloudflare gods and are in cahoots with Google and Microsoft to force you to use theirs instead or is there some proper reason why Brave has become a useless pile of crap?

[jagnet]

Brave is fine; Cloudflare is an overly sensitive nightmare. Always has been, but it has got worse recently.

No other traffic firewalls have issues like Cloudflare does.

Try refreshing the page and then clicking the box again.

When you do get past, make sure you leave a message for the site owners that trying to access their site is becoming increasingly difficult. They usually won't have any idea that they're paying money for a service that's losing them money.

Like Wix, I get all our clients to recommend Cloudflare... to their competitors.

[grumbledoak]

I use Brave and have some pretty strict settings and a VPN. I've been Cloudflare checked about twice ever.

I doubt Cloudflare cares which browser you are using. More likely your settings, maybe your IP range.

[tribbles]

There was an article on Slashdot this morning about Cloudflare blocking niche browsers, although Brave wasn't mentioned.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/439891

[Tisy]

jagnet said:

Try refreshing the page and then clicking the box again

Doesn't make any difference. Still stuck in an infinite verify-you-are-human loop.

tribbles said:

There was an article on Slashdot this morning about Cloudflare blocking niche browsers, although Brave wasn't mentioned.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/439891

The comments after that are a good read and provide a lot of insight into what's actually going on, and Cloudflare's apparent unwillingness to do anything about it as they are making bank from 20% of the global website owners who are paying them handsomely for this theatre of supposedly "preventing attacks".

The consensus seems to be that if you are not using vanilla Edge or Chrome then you are getting increasingly blocked from your user-agent data, especially if you use privacy-centric browsers with trackers, cookies and fingerprinting blocked as you are automatically assumed to be a "threat" until proven otherwise. As I mentioned, even allowing all tracking, cookies and fingerprinting in Brave, there are still many sites that Cloudflare won't let me access with Brave, yet access works with Chrome, including when I block fingerprinting and trackers, so even though Brave are not specifically mentioned in the browser list in the link above, they appear to be getting targetted along with Firefox too, it seems :

"In the past six weeks, I've also noticed a massive uptick in getting hit by these blocks with stock Firefox while attempting to load Cloudflare "protected" web sites. CF is just off the hook entirely, trying to destroy the internet as we know it, I guess?"

Cloudflare have become an absolute cancer on the internet since they first appeared about 5 (?) years ago. The internet used to work just fine before that.

This guy on the slashdot isn't holding back :

"And everyone who's paying Cloudflare should be appalled by it. It's not a DoS defense at all; it's the equivalent of trying to stop armed robbieries of banks by not allowing people with blue shirts to enter the building. It's utterly stupid.

Techniques for dealing with DoS attacks are well-known, well-documented, and have NOTHING to do with the user-agent sending HTTPS requests -- because of course any competent attacker can easily cause their attacking software to impersonate any browser (and they often do). These techniques are focused on traffic behavior at the IP layer and on its origin(s) - and they work. But of course deploying these would require competent personnel (not in evidence), careful study (not in evidence), and baseline expertise in network management (not in evidence).

Cloudflare is a scam."

Looks like basically "RIP" to every browser that isn't Edge or Chrome if you don't want to lose the will to live spending all your day trying to get past Cloudflare's gate-keepers. It has noticeably increased in recent weeks for me, with several websites that used to work fine are either completely inaccessible or have to pass the bot check on every page visit even though nothing has changed locally with my settings.

[wibble cb]

I have been using brave for years now, no issues other than it randomly switching tabs of its own accord.

[mmm-five]

No issues here on the latest Brave (Mac) either.

Can't remember ever seeing a Cloudflare prompt come up...but I suppose for some it could be down to the privacy features built-in to Brave that makes Cloudflare think something looks dodgy?

[Tisy]

Reading TheRegister article on Cloudflare's blocking of the internet, apparently one of their other criteria is to block you if you are using an outdated OS with a non-supported browser version. As I'.m using an older version of Windows then Brave, Chrome and Firefox are no longer supported unless I use Win 11. Firefox 115 ESR users (Win 7) are also reporting that they can't access most sites now for the same reason.