Cloudflare, dirty networks and politricks

Mon Aug 1 10:20:10 UTC 2016

On 2016-07-31 05:46, Randy Bush wrote:
>> This is silly. Anyone is of course allowed to deny service to parties
>> involved in obvious criminal activity.
> so block cloudflare from your network and go back to work already.
>
> randy

What is that supposed to accomplish? Cloudflare will still be helping 
selling DDoS attacks on my network.

No it is not the same as asking Cloudflare to do the sensible thing:

Cloudflare profits on DDoS attacks. We are the victims.

Cloudflare can dump just the obvious criminal customers. The ones they 
got abuse complaints about so they know which ones to look at. If we 
block Cloudflare there will be collateral damage to all legit Cloudflare 
customers and our own customers using services from legit Cloudflare 
customers.

Asking me to do anything at all is like telling the rape victim to take 
care of the problem herself. Cloudflare is the wrongdoing party here, 
not us.

Blocking Cloudflare does not stop the attacks. If Cloudflare stops 
offering protection service to booters, those sites will find it very 
hard to find alternatives. There is a reason they all are using 
Cloudflare. Thus if Cloudflare boots the booters we will very likely see 
a decrease in attacks.

My preferred solution is that management of Cloudflare decides to make 
their company a honest outfit again. Failing that, I would like law 
enforcement to coerce them into becoming a honest outfit. Failing that, 
I would want a judge in a civil lawsuit coerce them.

I do believe that most of us on this list have cause to do that civil 
lawsuit, especially if it was done as a class action. But I just own a 
small company that is not even based in the US, so I am not going to be 
the hero that funds it. Instead I will do what I can to warn everyone 
off this company.

Regards,

Baldur