
Is Cloudflare a honey pot? - phantom_oracle
http://www.crimeflare.com/honeypot.html
======
mdekkers
Going by their homepage, the site that posted this doesn't like anybody. Also,
they make a huge song and dance about people "hiding" behind cloudflare,
however:

 _Registry Registrant ID:

Registrant Name: WHOISGUARD PROTECTED

Registrant Organization: WHOISGUARD, INC._

yeah, whatever...

The same server also hosts a site with this fine page:
[http://www.namebase.net/books52.html](http://www.namebase.net/books52.html)
suggesting AIDS is a bio weapon engineered by the USA. Given that they appear
to have been designed by the same person with unlimited access to MSPaint,
version Windows 3.1, I think it is safe to assume this is by the same people.

------
boulos
No.

Even if the original idea (which btw, the origin story was shared on
TechCrunch when they launched, was maybe even on their about page, etc.) was
from this honeypot project, CloudFlare is a different beast. Moreover, there's
now the company-wide "we'd all have to be in on it" perspective. If you read
through the posts from folks like jgrahamc and others, you'd hopefully
conclude that selling visitor data would be much less interesting than their
actual business.

~~~
mdb333
Still, begs the question: what value do they get from their "Free" customers?
Is it simply a freemium model based on getting conversions OR do they extract
value from front-ending those smaller sites? Seems like the latter for sure...
but that doesn't make it a honeypot.

~~~
jgrahamc
Cloudflare makes money by charging our customers for the service we provide.
Turns out that lots of people pay us for that service and that money is much
greater than the cost of running the service.

Here's the important thing about those FREE customers: many of them turn into
high-paying customers later. For example, it is very common for CIO/CTO at
$BIG_CORP to quietly test their personal blog on a Cloudflare FREE plan and we
have no idea they are doing it. Later CIO/CTO uses that experience and decides
to spend $BIG_DOLLAR from $BIG_CORP with Cloudflare.

------
matheweis
There's a CloudFlare engineer who posts prolifically here on HN; he's denied
that they sell data of any kind numerous times. I think it's safe to take them
at their word without proof otherwise?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830120)

~~~
flukus
You think it's safe to take the word of an anonymous stranger on the internet?

~~~
thehardsphere
Yes.

There is nothing particularly dangerous about accepting claims from strangers
on the internet at face value. I don't use their service, so I'm not going to
be harmed by anything he says if he is lying or if he is telling the truth. If
I decide later to use their service or if he says something that seems false
or misleading when taken at face value, I can adjust my level of skepticism
accordingly.

------
burntrelish1273
It's definitely an organizational "SPoF" a-la Lavabit in that govts can lean
on it, attempt to squash it, try to hack it, etc., whereas distributed
solutions like i2p and BitTorrent are harder to strangle.

