Comment by supermdguy
1 day ago
Cloudflare sets up a reverse proxy as part of their core offering, so by default they can MITM your proxy. The “orange cloud” by a DNS record means it points to their proxy instead of your server.
1 day ago
Cloudflare sets up a reverse proxy as part of their core offering, so by default they can MITM your proxy. The “orange cloud” by a DNS record means it points to their proxy instead of your server.
What a shame. I wasn’t expecting these dark patterns from Cloudflare at all.
That's how you get DDOS protection / edge delivery, so it's not a dark pattern. I imagine it's the main reason why people would DNS through them in the first place.
An “orange cloud” with no other indication to represent a feature that is enabled-by-default (with implicitly enabled analytics) sounds like quite the dark pattern. The UI makes the DNS record seem to point to A (your entry) but actually points to B (Cloudflare). This isn’t an oversight, it’s an attempt to obfuscate.
Even if the choice to enable it by default makes sense for Cloudflare’s userbase, the implications are hidden and non-obvious.
6 replies →
That’s not a dark pattern. That’s one of the core reasons to use Cloudflare.
And of course by extension it is also one of the core reasons not to use Cloudflare.
I would say that Cloudfare having customers who don't know exactly what they are getting (into) is actually a Cloudfare problem they should take responsibility for.
I would say its up to the user to research what they are using.