[CloudFare Problems]

On 10/2/2016 at 11:28 AM, Jazzwineman said:

You are completely wrong on a legal standpoint and it is worth the time and effort of lawsuit and referral to the FBI which I have already done through a friend who works with Interpol.

 

You are suggesting transactional immunity. They have been made aware of and in a clear way by law enforcement (of which you do not need to see published) If you want to make an excuse for what would constitute a conspiracy to commit fraud and distribute obscene material to minors- I would welcome you make that argument in court.

 

Further you attempt to talk down to me fails on a number of issues, most of which is that i am have been a  computer engineer for more than 25 years and am certified in everything, minus Adobe and Autodesk. and manage some 14,000 computers as I write this.

 

Instead of finding an excuse that is overloading our systems with junk and fraudulent emails only designed to steal from innocent victims, it might be more appreciated if you attempted to find a solution.  Cloudflare is creating a problem, they could choose to control. Apparently their lack of ethics and profit motivation do not give them an incentive to do so. Thta leaves us with other resources that mean that public, civil and criminal pressure can be applied to force them to do what is right.Sorry, in the law, being a middleman does give you freedom from liability. You remind me of Condi Rice saying she had nothing to do with the torture issue- she only delivered orders. I would suggest you read transcriptions of the Nuremberg tails and international law to see how well your argument fits.

I think there was a misunderstanding here.  A lot of my comments were general information for anyone who happens to read this thread, nothing against you personally.

I am completely agreeing with you that if Cloudflare is proxying material that they have been properly informed violates some law, they need to stop or face the consequences.  However, Cloudflare doesn't have access to the original source of the material.  I've seen this mentioned in the statements they've made when people have accused them of things before (implying there are a decent number of people who don't understand this), and it's completely true.  Just like Google can remove the search results but has no access to the actual website, Cloudflare can remove the proxying functions spreading that website out, but they have no ability to do anything with the original server (since it's someone else's property).  I'm not suggesting transactional immunity, I'm just pointing out that Cloudflare can only change things in their own systems, not in their customers' completely independent systems.  And just to explicitly state it, the original copy still being there is not a valid excuse for Cloudflare to not terminate their proxying service either.

I also wasn't trying to say that you shouldn't attempt a legal fight over this.  I was simply pointing out that there are a lot of things that make these cases very difficult to win.  The CAN-spam Act was passed 13 years ago.  In the first 5 years spam was explicitly illegal, it actually increased 10-fold.  I wish more spam and online fraud would get prosecuted, but we seem to have gotten the short end of the stick here.  Unfortunately, it's much easier to steal resources and abuse others online than it is to track those people down and make them face the consequences.  At least in this case, it's an established business and not some random spammer hiding in a shady country somewhere, so it's a much more solid target.  I genuinely wish you luck in this battle, and hope you succeed in stopping blatantly criminal actions.  I don't personally have the resources for legal fights, so I just stick to helping people on the technical side of things.

[CloudFare Problems]

21 hours ago, Jazzwineman said:

I have every intent on filing a lawsuit against Cloudfare. They can use their reverse proxy excuse all day long and after they have been informed of the illegal content and still do nothing, I believe that a reasonable conspiracy case can be made against them. They indicate they have no access to their customer's web content, but they can after having been informed of such. I would hope that spam cops would be more understanding of less informed people that the Chinese through (qq.com) are attempted to defraud and steal the identities of people and send clear obscene material through the web-( probably to minors as well) Cloudfare is acting as their wall of protection, but Cloudflare could stop this if so motivated.

Cloudflare is 100% correct that they don't have any access to the customer's content.  They're simply a middleman handing things back and forth.  You have just as much access to the original content as they do.

However, as a middleman proxying things back and forth, Cloudflare is completely in control of handing that content back and forth through their own systems.  That's their entire point of existing.

They absolutely cannot be expected to remove the original content, as it's entirely someone else's system.  They absolutely should be expected to stop proxying content when notified that it's illegal.  Google can't take down the actual sites listed in their search results (because it's someone else's system), but they are expected to remove links from their own system which point to those systems.  I see no reason why Cloudflare should be treated any differently.

 

Caveats:

1. You telling them that you don't like something doesn't make it illegal and/or necessary for them to remove it.
2. Laws are complex.  Even if there is some allegedly illegal content, there are procedures to be followed in dealing with it.
3. Laws frequently lag behind technology.  Even if something is illegal offline (and should be elsewhere according to common sense), it may not be illegal online due to technicalities in laws.

The anonymity of the internet, its international nature, and the technological cluelessness of our lawmakers all contribute to making legal fights against these sorts of things very difficult.  I'm not in any way qualified to give you legal advice, but I wish you luck in fighting against those who enable spam and other fraud.

[CloudFare Problems]

2 hours ago, kluless said:

I'm well aware of the tracking URL, but that disappears once spam report is sent

No it doesn't.  You can find the tracking URL of past reports by viewing the report in your history and clicking the "Parse" link at the top.

 

2 hours ago, kluless said:

I thought maybe you could do something with the actual report numbers.

No, we can't.  We need the tracking URL.