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Banned from CloudFlare - Image Hosting against ToS

K

Kayz

Chevereto Member
Hello

This news may come as a shock and surprise to the entire community here as we all use CloudFlare, in fact we are reliant on them somewhat to save us some $$$.

If you are reading this, before i tell you my long story i will tell you the short story and answer.

Short Story and Answer:

I used CloudFlare for my image hosting site for the last 3 years, now they have banned me. If you are hosting images with any type of image hosting script you are not allowed to use CloudFlare as it is against their ToS.


Long Story:

I started image hosting back in 2008 with different scripts before discovering Chevereto in 2013.

I can safely say 3 years ago i had the most popular image hosting website running on Chevereto, it was the number 1 Chevereto site. It was so big i couldn't manage it, every minute there was an upload. I was hosting on a dedicated server. I had Google Advertisement but it did not pay any more than $10 a month which was peanuts....

I did my best to moderate but people began uploading copyright material they shouldn't have. Even after deleting what i could there appeared to be a few files still left somewhere. I was given the ultimatum from my host so i had no choice but to delete the entire bank which was the only right thing to do. I remember the database alone was over 35 GB. After deleting the entire site and starting again i began receiving a barrage of emails from users asking me where their files had went, unfortunately i did not have an answer for them.

So i started afresh 3 years ago, i lost my position on Google and was not getting many hits, downgraded onto a VPS as it was the only viable solution.


So back to the topic of this thread.

Unsure of what CloudFlare's policy was before, but now they are big, bad and bolder and they can afford to kick people off especially if you're on a free plan like many of us.

CloudFlare has banned my site from using their free services and even their paid - pro and business packages, they just wiped me off giving no reason. After I pestered them several times by email they gave me an explanation. They said i was serving a "disproportionate percentage of images"and non-HTML content which is not allowed.

This was their exact response:

"Hello,​
​
Please be aware Cloudflare is a network provider offering a reverse proxy, pass-through security service. We are not a hosting provider nor do we allow our services to store files, or be linked to file storage sites. Using Cloudflare’s services primarily as an online storage space, including the storage, caching or proxying of a disproportionate percentage of images, movies, audio files or other non-HTML content is prohibited.​
​
Please note that as the sole purpose of your site is to distribute files, we have routed your domains off of Cloudflare’s platform for violations of our Terms of Service(ToS). We will not be reinstating your account."​


So i looked up their ToS which can be found here: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ it reads:


"2.8 Limitation on Serving Non-HTML Content​
​
The Service is offered primarily as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless explicitly included as a part of a Paid Service purchased by you, you agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other functionally equivalent applications and rendering Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other functional equivalents. Use of the Service for serving video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content is prohibited, unless purchased separately as a Paid Service."​
​

So they could have at least pre-warned me or tell me to upgrade, instead they took me offline and most of my site. So i inquired about the paid service, they said i could not host it on their pro or business plan $200/per month, the only option i had was the enterprise solution!!? What!?

Here you can see my last months statistics, this is nothing compared to what i had 3 years ago - yet i was banned.

cloudflare2.png



So i don't lose my Google position i had to drastically look for alternative solution for the last 5 days - unfortunately i still could not find a replacement to CloudFlare. Traffic is still being routed to my VPS directly and it's only a matter of time before it exceeds the bandwidth/HTTP requests which is what i am worried about.

So this is a heads up to everybody hosting images, make sure you have a backup plan should CloudFlare discover you are hosting an image site as they will take you offline without notice.


I'd appreciate any ideas on any alternatives to CloudFlare's proxy solution that do not charge an arm and a leg or what cost effective solution's you think is best to manage HTTPS requests which sometimes slows down my website - (not so worried about bandwidth usage at this stage).


Stay safe.

Kayz
 
The thing with CloudFlare is how exactly their business works. A free account is an investment that they make so you depend entirely on them. When your usage is too high they simply ask for money or shutdown because they have you exactly where they want to.

Cheapest provider is B2, you should check on that.

Don't be that sad about this, if you made it to this size is because it you are doing something good. Sadly at this time we don't have the tools to make money directly from the end users of the software but we will get there, and we will be able to monetize our websites without having to beg Google or anyone.
 
Rodolfo said:
The thing with CloudFlare is how exactly their business works. A free account is an investment that they make so you depend entirely on them. When your usage is too high they simply ask for money or shutdown because they have you exactly where they want to.

Cheapest provider is B2, you should check on that.

Don't be that sad about this, if you made it to this size is because it you are doing something good. Sadly at this time we don't have the tools to make money directly from the end users of the software but we will get there, and we will be able to monetize our websites without having to beg Google or anyone.
Click to expand...

Assuming by B2 you're referring to BackBlaze? Unfortunately they use CloudFlare: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/solutions/content-delivery.html

rdn said:
I would advice choosing servers from here:
https://www.hetzner.com/sb?hdd_from=1000&search=ECC

Large Disk space
Unli bandwidth @ 1gps
Cheap Monthly

I got file and image hosting hosted on those servers.
Click to expand...

Thank you, presumably their servers are provided unmanaged? Also they don't appear to offer CDN.
 
I also read the rest of the site, it says no charge of interconnection, meaning if you serve a domain through CloudFlare, and it's pointing to B2, it's counted as free. (HTML, JS, CSS), they also put a note of "paid services also available"
 
Kirbeh said:
If the domain is banned, use another one for serving content?

However if it's your account, yeah, I don't think you'll be getting that back.
Click to expand...

Not account just the domain. How do I apply another domain to do this, via CNAME? Maybe you should send me a PM! ;) Actually I will send you one now.
 
Cloudflare kicked me out in a similar fashion a few months back. I was expecting it for some time and was prepared as I was sending in excess off 190TB traffic their way. They gave me a week's time and I had my servers ready with enough capacity to accept the traffic thanks to Hetzner. I am not using any CDN and don't think it makes a huge difference if you have a really fast server with enough capacity.

The guy from Cloudflare was so rude. He started like their enterprise plan starts at $3000 but I have to take their $15000 plan. When I told him I don't make 1% of that he was like you are lying. "You send us 100TB traffic and saying you make nothing, I don't believe you. You can't use our service, take your site anywhere else." When I asked him then why do you guys advertise "Free unlimited". He told I was clearly running a business and not paying Cloudflare.
 
I use CloudFlare now myself and haven't had an issue yet. I was going to use BunnyCDN further, but I switched over to CloudFlare due to better availability.

I however do use a paid Cloudflare account. I talked to their sales, and they set me up with a plan where I pay for every 1000 hits to their CDN. It isn't very much. I pay about $10 a month right now.

I however do use B2 as well. So they haven't ever given me an issue.
 
@Kayz I am sorry this happened to you. I've been using Cloudflare for a while. I also run a very large Chevereto site. I have over 5.7 million images in a single B2 Bucket. I deal with several terabytes of data on a consistent basis. Cloudflare has been a godsend to me.

Did you ever pay for any of their services or did you solely use their free service? I pay for their workers, so each image that is served, is paid for. They seem to be fine with me.
 
ashkir said:
@Kayz I am sorry this happened to you. I've been using Cloudflare for a while. I also run a very large Chevereto site. I have over 5.7 million images in a single B2 Bucket. I deal with several terabytes of data on a consistent basis. Cloudflare has been a godsend to me.

Did you ever pay for any of their services or did you solely use their free service? I pay for their workers, so each image that is served is paid for. They seem to be fine with me.
Click to expand...

Hi, this is not about how many images you have stored. It about how much traffic your website is receiving. It also has nothing to do with paid or free accounts.

Why don't you email support@abuse.zendesk.com, give them your website URL, and specifically tell them you are hosting an image sharing website and then ask them whether this is allowed? Let me know what they say?

You're welcome to tell me about your website, I can also ask on your behalf. How does that sound?
 
That is the email to zendesk and the way you phrased it sounds like you're up to sabotage. But, as I stated in my post, I use b2. B2 has an Enterprise account that gets a different set of rules, and is an advertised purpose of B2/Cloudflare. I spoke to Cloudflare Workers directly to get a script working specifically for an image host and they were aware.

Did you ever pay for anything in their bandwidth alliance? I pay for my bandwidth & my worker scripts. Half to B2 and half to Cloudflare.
 
" Thank you for contacting Cloudflare Technical Support. Your ticket number is ---------. Soon, you will receive an email confirmation with ticket details. "

I'll bit ethe bullet myself.
 
Also here is from their newest terms of service issued in July for PAID tiers:
Cloudflare Workers is a Service that permits developers to deploy and run encapsulated versions of their proprietary software source code (each a “Workers Script”) on Cloudflare’s edge servers. You may use Cloudflare Workers (whether in conjunction with Cloudflare Workers KV or not) to serve HTML content as well as non-HTML content (e.g., image files, audio files) other than video files.
 
ashkir said:
That is the email to zendesk and the way you phrased it sounds like you're up to sabotage. But, as I stated in my post, I use b2. B2 has an Enterprise account that gets a different set of rules, and is an advertised purpose of B2/Cloudflare. I spoke to Cloudflare Workers directly to get a script working specifically for an image host and they were aware.

Did you ever pay for anything in their bandwidth alliance? I pay for my bandwidth & my worker scripts. Half to B2 and half to Cloudflare.
Click to expand...

That is the direct email I have been communicating on. Their Terms and Conditions are pretty clear, you can see it on their website here: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ you assume by being on a paid plan everything is ok. I haven't phrased anything to sabotage anybody.... 😂

What part of "Use of the Service for serving video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content is prohibited," do you not understand?

I have been paying $200 per month, how much did you say you were paying B2 and CloudFlare? 😂

This is not a competition of who's paying vs who's not. You are confusing CloudFlare workers / Workers Script with CloudFlare CDN the two are different things completely.
 
I think that most are not taking the relevance for what @Kayz is sharing here. He is telling us something that happened and that it could affect anyone of us. I've been in this since early 2000 and the attitude of CloudFlare doesn't surprise me at all.

Is normal that a service provider suddenly kick you asking for huge pricing increase or ask you to just leave. I've seen it countless times and it is always a very specific limiting, because when companies do this for a large share of users it gets noticed (ask photobucket) and blows right away.

I understand that the normal reaction is that something like this "won't happen to me", but I'm afraid that it could happen and some just have bad luck. Anyway, don't ever depend that hard on a provider. It is safer to have a plan B... Just in case.
 
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