Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers
A few hours ago I switched my nameservers to Cloudflare in order to enable R2 bucket serving through my own subdomain, and I found out that it silently had injected a JS analytics snippet in my HTML-only JS-free site textlog.cc — I had to go to the Analytics dashboard, Add the site to the analytics and then disable the snippet. I find this approach entirely invasive, you should opt-in to features like that not have to opt-out. Just a warning out there to folks who might not be aware of this.
This makes the client only load self-hosted scripts, or scripts only from the specified origins, among the other directives CSP allows (e.g. restricting styles, images, frames, etc.): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/CSP
Yup, I explicitly had all anaytics turned off. But had a few sites using Cloudflare for caching. Now I'm checking and seeing this on all of them. This is gross and unacceptable. "Caching" does not mean "modifying my site".
I can’t recall if there was a setting to enable reverse proxy, if there was it was On by default since I didn’t expect to have reverse proxy enabled as well. But you can also rp without injecting a script. That’s overdoing it.
I don't know what happened in this situation but beware that CF and similar providers are not true DNS hosting providers. They do DNS, but only so their CDN stuff works, and to lock their customers from using whatever DNS hosting they want. Various things that one might reasonably want to do with your DNS zone are not possible with their product. So use it only because you need to do so in conjunction with their core services.
Yes, they add the js if "web analytics" is enabled. I believe I had to manually enable it on my old sites though. Maybe it's enabled by default when adding new domains?
Are you using CF as a proxy or only for DNS? I ask because I just went to check my domains on the dashboard (some purchased a few years ago, one purchased just a couple days ago), and none of them have Web Analytics enabled.
I have all my domains set to DNS only, so no CF proxy. Wondering if that is why?
I just went and switched them to DNS only, they were on Proxy by default, that also should have been opt-in. Maybe I missed the option while switching the nameservers because I did it in a hurry but still.
A simple screen when I did the switch that requires explicitly ‘Enable Proxy’ or ‘skip for now’ would have been enough. Also for ‘Enable Analytics’. None of these existed, or not very obvious otherwise I’d seen them.
We use Cloudflare tunnels for connecting distributed workers to central infrastructure. Haven't seen this on tunnel traffic, but good to know it happens on nameserver-managed sites. Another reason to audit what your CDN injects — same applies to checking your security headers regularly.
Oh gosh I didn’t enable anything like that also. I just wanted the nameservers in order to serve the bucket under my subdomain. What else is there I wonder?
Surprise! The man in the middle man-in-the-middles!
This is only the beginning, when you’ll get used to this they’ll do worse and worse, enshittification, remember?
Cloudflare is doing this already. Once they had enough monopoly power, they started a program to block all bots that don't undergo invasive KYC procedures. Eventually, they might become a KYC broker for regular browser users too. The free internet is over.
Noticed this the other day as well. Sketchy as fuck. I didn't have analytics enabled. I had to go and enable to get access to the option to turn this off
The RUM Diaries: Enabling Web Analytics by Default
(2 points, 11 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291323
(1 point, 11 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45339321
This makes the client only load self-hosted scripts, or scripts only from the specified origins, among the other directives CSP allows (e.g. restricting styles, images, frames, etc.): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/CSP
<script type="module" src="https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js/v4513226..." integrity="sha512-ZE9pZaUXND66v380QUtch/5sE9tPFh2zg45pR2PB0CVkCtOREv2AJKkSidISWkysEuQ0EH8faUU5du78bx87UQ==" data-cf-beacon='{"version":"2024.11.0","token":"c0859b51a7804ab5a9cc8e9e2b2c4cde","r":1}' crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
Cloudflare injected hostile code into a site they are not even hosting? If it's HTTPS, how do they even do that?
Does it violate the "exceeds authorized access" provision in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
It seems incredibly unlikely cloudflare does this when just DNS hosting, if for no other reason then that this would break so many things.
I have all my domains set to DNS only, so no CF proxy. Wondering if that is why?
The proxy is like 99% of why people use Cloudflare
Make a CNAME record the same way you would for a CDN subdomain.
(I am not yet running this in production, YMMV.)
https://limereader.com/
If they can inject script, they can also snoop on all your cleartext traffic without you knowing....
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Xxi0b9trY