CloudFlare

[knowledgeshare]

I got this message...
"Cloudflare activation and FTP server address change
Dear Webmaster,
Cloudflare has been activated for your website for security reasons, you will receive another email with additional information about the Cloudflare service and its benefits. To access your web space with FTP you have to use this address:
ftp.knowledgeshare.altervista.org" from AlterVista <nobody@sg.altervista.com>
... last night.

I'm pretty sure Cloudflare was an option we could activate? But I did not activate it. The FTP login I've been using still works. FTPing was my main concern, so good there, I think?

But I am wondering as to what is going on with this activating, was it AlterVista that did it? And what it's about, though that seems to be hinted at a future email. Not sure why that couldn't of been explained in this one though.

And when I go to it in Resources and click on it, it is asking for a log in and mentions something about an account?

Yea, so what's up with all of this?

[filsil]

Hi,
we automatically activate Cloudflare when we detect unusual patterns of traffic on a website. If you need more informations about Cloudflare you can read the overview on their website: https://www.cloudflare.com/overview

Your Cloudflare account is [your altervista username]@altervista.org and you can recover your password and access to Cloudflare control panel here: https://www.cloudflare.com/login

[knowledgeshare]

Well things had been running smooth before it was activated. Since then my site has been sluggish and even non-responsiveness at times.

[knowledgeshare]

Lol, their based in China, and I'm supposed to believe their for my security. There goes all my and my users info to the world, thank you very much for that.

[filsil]

Cloudflare is a company based in San Francisco used by many hosting services, but as any other big content delivery network they have servers in different countries. You can see their network map here: https://www.cloudflare.com/network-map
Each request should be routed to the best server to optimize your website performance and security.

If you worry about your and your users privacy you can have a look at Cloudflare's security and privacy policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/security-policy
If you prefer you can deactivate Cloudflare from your website control panel, but I can't guarantee that our system will never enable it again.

[knowledgeshare]

I can see the location of the server before they try masking it to report USA, it initializes in Hong Kong.

I had been having an issue with some basic coding not seemingly working. After finally getting into cloudFlare I found it was due to cloudflare. Oh and that issue directly proves their caching all of my site.

Might I recommend instead of automatically activating CouldFlare for users, send them a notice of unusual traffic patterns and suggest CloudFlare as a possible security measure.

Thank you filsil

[knowledgeshare]

I have to reiterate my recommendation of not auto enabling CloudFlare. I have had dozens of recent issues that I can now track-back directly to it. Not to mention it made my site slow and not loading at all seemingly every other hour. I had zero server issues before it was activated.

[Gianluca]

knowledgeshare:

cloudflare is a CDN (content delivery network) and has datacenters all over the world (including China), you can also get in touch with them at support@cloudflare.com using as email addres <your_altervista_username>@altervista.org