CloudFlare and spammers?

How can CloudFlare be used by spammers?

[Hope_Fowl]

In another thread, someone claimed that CloudFlare.com, a CDN which blocks spammers, should be blocked because it is used by spammers as cloud computing.

How does one use the CloudFlare CDN for cloud computing? Maybe I need to learn how to do arithmetic with DNS servers.

[incrediBILL]

Cloud computing is no different than any other shared or dedicated hosting service with the exception your applications can be running anywhere on the network of cloud computers and may appear to use more than one IP address instead of a single IP address. Mostly it just makes cloud hosted bots way more annoying than the rest of them.

The only way to effectively address rogue bots on cloud computing is to block all assigned IP ranges for the entire data center,

However this is nothing new, most of us already do this for non-cloud computing data centers already, which is a good thing as most of those are now offering cloud computer services,

Maybe I need to learn how to do arithmetic with DNS servers.

You've repeated this twice now and it made no sense to me either time, please explain.

[Hope_Fowl]

It looks to me like CloudFlare is a content delivery network, so it only delivers content from web servers to web browsers. I don't see how a cloud hosted bot can use CloudFlare in a way which affects the web servers of other people, just as I don't see how to do arithmetic with CloudFlare's DNS servers in order to do cloud computing.

And by my arithmetic, I repeated it once. I said it twice, because it was first said in a different thread -- where I think someone edited their comment to suggest a new thread after I had responded to them.

[incrediBILL]

Yes, you're right. I just went and read up on it, it says it's a content delivery network, doesn't say it's a full cloud computing network like Amazon Web Services, appears to possibly be just one-way delivery.

But there's only one way to really find out what can be done, sign up and try it, but I don't think bots can run through it based on what I just read.

[Hope_Fowl]

Yes, I've tried it. You enter your DNS info so their DNS servers know your domain, select which subdomains should have HTTP/HTTPS be served by the CF CDN, then point your domain at the CF DNS servers. Your servers start seeing requests from CF servers, with browsers' IP addresses available if your logging supports it.

The original thread was about filtering out spambot traffic, and CF says that they try to filter out spambots. So I'm still puzzled why someone said that CF IPs should be blocked.

[incrediBILL]

So I'm still puzzled why someone said that CF IPs should be blocked.

Probably because most cloud computing is full blown hosting, not just content delivery, the same knee-jerk reaction I had from their name alone.

[keyplyr]

So I'm still puzzled why someone said that CF IPs should be blocked.

If that "someone" your refer to is me, that's not what I said. I said many of us block it. I have long blocked it because I've had bad agents come from within their range causing havoc at my server. I think they hide there. I only allow human users and beneficial agents to access my servers. What's beneficial is up to me to decide.

[Hope_Fowl]

So I'm still puzzled why someone said that CF IPs should be blocked.

If that "someone" your refer to is me, that's not what I said. I said many of us block it. I have long blocked it because I've had bad agents come from within their range causing havoc at my server.

You clearly said that many block that IP range, then used a different meaning of "hide" a server. I obviously suggested hiding a web server behind the CF service (to stop spam bots from bothering the original poster's server), while you used the meaning of a bot server hiding in an IP range. Incoming and outgoing activity are different critters.