During the past decade since this thread started, management has obviously seen our opinions, yet the Cloudflare game hasn't really abated. This suggests to me that "yes" ddos attacks remain a significant concern.

Indeed, that may be the case. And I hope my post didn't come across as whining. I despise whining about rules on a free site, so that is not my intent. It's definitely more of a curiosity than anything else since this is, quite literally, the only site I visit with any regularity that blocks me while I am using my VPN.

I concur. The Cloudflare thing really doesn’t make much sense to me. Cloudflare underpins a great % of the internet and it’s DDOS protections aren’t rare, but this is the only website other than Ticketmaster that gives issues with VPN, and even Ticketmaster with their much more apparent reason for needing to protect against bots buying up all the tickets is substantially more loosely guarded than FlyerTalk (switching servers a few times usually gets me to Ticketmaster).

My guess is that it was an extremely heavy handed decision made for this site and the consequences of which were never really weighed or revisited since. And like you, I use FT much less because of it, relying on the bit of info I get from email alerts instead of visiting the site itself. I had to log into the manually “blessed” VPN server just to write this, in response to your post that I found in my email.

oh well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Back in Europe, back to needing Proton VPN for some sites back home, and... FT still doesn't work with it. Frustrating.

I just signed up to give this a try. It seems like all US servers are blocked by FT! IBJoel

You signed up just to confirm it is blocked by FT?

Oddly I am currently logged in via a ProtonVPN gateway in US-WA and it obviously works.

Which one? There are lots!

Yup, I think it was #22 since I was still connected to it yesterday when I checked. But it's no longer working with that server. I tried a bunch of other WA-based ones, and they are all blocked. Too lazy to try them all.

Edit: oddly, #22 now works again with FT.

I really don't have the time to try every one of them to figure out which one works. I really wonder if each of those servers have its own unique IP address?

Don`t want to get too technical here but the filtering here is probably done at the ASN level (Autonomous System Number) which is a higher level protocol than IP addresses. Let's you block many addresses efficiently

I was in 2 different Hiltons on two different Seychelles islands last week both the hotels internet was not getting access to FT, giving me the following error page. Other sites that I accessed were fine. This was with my laptop not using any VPN. I assume Hilton was employing some VPN that FT/Cloudflare did not like

using windscribe changed the error, but I was still unable to gain access. I was just looking to waste a bit of time and so did not investigate any further if using different windscribe servers would allow access.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...6dd71af211.jpg

With Nord VPN from Mexico I get blocked some of the time but if I set Seattle as my location, I usually get through. Now don't block me please.

The NordVPN Chicago gateway works on FT.

It might not be the best idea to announce mass-use servers that don't trigger Cloudflare's sensitivities (yet) on the public internet.

Actually I have found that most of the NordVPN gateway cities in North America seem to work. At least those that I have tried.

I suppose it was only a matter of time, but I've noticed a significant uptick in posts by bots during the past several months, e.g.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36166652-post93.html

My life experience is to use different VPNs for different reasons. I run my own through a router at my main home in Nevada, and also through my second home in SF. I use Proton for privacy. And two different work VPNs for GFW and not GFW content. The two from my routers seem the most acceptable to FT.

GFW = Great Firewall

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall

What ping speeds do you get when in China?

I have not been to China since 2019, but when accessing my US servers from the Chinese VPN the delay is noticeable as you'd assume.

On the commercial VPN I use, a lot of the California servers usually have short pings. Taiwan, South Korea, HK, etc are faster, but having a US location is often desirable for me.

Was blocked in Japan shortly after arriving from VN with no VPN but using an IP address I've used a 1000 times before to access Flyertalk. Used a VPN to the US to get access.

I'm pretty sure Cloudflare casts a wider net than IP address.

I've experienced this on both my private VPN (self hosted on a VPS) and even on some public WiFis, I can think of the SNCF trains in France for example. Is there anything the admins could do about it? (sorry for the ping IBJoel) or should I contact Cloudflare? (their error page says to contact the site admin so I'm coming here first).

It's the only site I can think of that's this protective but I know security is always a difficult balancing act.

Norton VPN at a US Hotel using a US access point for the VPN. I don't really like using Hotel WiFI without a VPN so this is annoying.

What happened?

The owner of this website (FlyerTalk - The world's most popular frequent flyer community - FlyerTalk is a living, growing community where frequent travelers around the world come to exchange knowledge and experiences about everything miles and points related.) has banned the autonomous system number (ASN) your IP address is in (212238) from accessing this website.

Hackers and spammers have the ability to sign up for the same commercial VPNs as the rest of us. If they happen to launch DDOS attacks from the same servers that we use, I can understand why IP blocking is IB's (via Cloudflare) response.

ETA: On the commercial VPN that I use, only the biggest/fastest servers are on Cloudflare's hot list, and have been for ages. So. if I know I want to access FT (while also on VPN), I pick a server in a place like Santa Clara (i.e. not San Jose), that looks decent on the speed front, and roll with it.

Why is flyertalk a cloudfare blocking access to NordVPN users?
 

Surely this can be fixed?
most frequent flyers will use a VON and Nord must be one of the most popular
it doesn’t happen all the time but it does block it a lot of the time

A lot of malicious actors also use these tools and we can get DDoS'd if we aren't careful. To my knowledge, we recently started working on an initiative to separate bot and human traffic, so fingers crossed that will solve it

​​​​​​Hackers also like cheap (and, therefore, popular) VPNs.

I have surfshark, and in the browser app for it there is a setting to bypass via website for their vpn and other items they offer... I put FT in, and done! VPN on, FT accessible. Maybe other VPN providers have a similar option? Just a thought.

You seem to be referring to split tunneling. Most commercial VPNs, even crappy ones, offer that feature in some capacity. Personally, I prefer choosing servers that work with FT in the first place, and that's never been a tall order for me.

My VPN is blocked on FT for just a few of the 50+ different connections. Pictures don’t show up, though, on that ones that do work.

I've done a lot of playing with my VPN (NordVPN and I also tried the free trial with Proton VPN). If your VP allows you to switch the core VP protocols, try OpenVPN. I did that and about 90% of my FT issues disappeared. After that, in the case of a rare CloudFlare blockage, I simply disconnect and immediately reconnect. Basically change my IP address. ALways works.

And I never found any difference in using split tunneling or not.

A lot of Chinese websites and apps require a China IP address. If I fancy using them and also accessing sites like Google without switching my VPN on/off, split tunneling works nicely.

I'm just happy to be able to connect with one of my network printers and my NAS while using my Internet with my VPN.

Incase some readers of this thread want to clue up on some of the work Cloudflare do to identify dodgy IPs verses highly shared IPs, then this blog article might be of interest...

https://blog.cloudflare.com/detectin...ateral-damage/

It does demand some technical understanding but it does go to demonstrate that CF do attempt to mitigate the relatively blunt tools that block by IP address, but there are limits on how far they can go.

FlyerTalk / ExpressVPN
 

I travel internationally quite a bit and I'm always using a VPN connected to a USA server through ExpressVPN; I always have to turn OFF the VPN to access FT and this is the only web site I use regularly that I have to do so. Is there any way around this? I thought maybe a static IP but I'm having setup problems. If anyone has worked around this and specifically with ExpressVPN please reach out. Cheers ✈️

I have the same issue. I use Windscribe and FlyerTalk is the only website I'm blocked from accessing.

I don’t purposefully use a VPN with Flyertalk, but often I’m streaming something from the US. Mostly I don’t get blocked using the VPN Unlimited 2 streaming nodes. There are 10-15 US city nodes, occasionally one will be blocked.

Although with the current annoying Cloudflare screen, I might start using it.