Question: Captchas after previewing posts

A few members and I have reported getting captchas when attempting to "Go Advanced" while writing a post.

An exemplary screenshot:


Clicking "I'm not a robot" usually, in my case, triggers something along the lines of clicking the images that have "trees" or that show a "body of water" or a "stop sign". After completing these events, I am allowed to preview my post, but sometimes I'm presented instead with a white screen.

In case it plays a part, my browser of choice is Google Chrome, though I have heard someone experience the captchas while using Mozilla Firefox.

Could there be any explanations for the phenomena? I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum to report this!

If you're browsing from home, the most likely case is that someone that shares your service provider got their IP flagged by Cloudflare for malicious content (whether that's people in the same household as you or someone who previously had the IP address your ISP has since assigned to you).

sometimes they are trigger by IP (geo locations or bad rep), sometime by a bad browser (plugin, exploit, compromised), other times it may get triggered on complex links, such as a preview if there are certain key 'trigger' words in there.. In all cases, if you complete the captcha, its SUPPOSE TO allow you access for 1 week until it needs to ask again, if triggered.

so, those of you who are getting this, where are you connecting from? browser? os? did you do a complete virus / malware scan of your device?

Also note we try to actively block VPN and other anonymity services and related IPs for security reasons.

I got this the other night. *Every* time I previewed the thread (it was a long one and needed a fair bit of previewing) the captcha came up. Hotspoted wifi but no VPN. I've also gotten this for modcp/admincp actions from home in regular circumstances, and only within the last week. No viruses or anything, nothing different in what I'm doing.

I'm gonna cast my voice along the rest and say this is happening to me as well, but only when I'm working with CSS. I've PMed Rukario about this

Using firefox, windows 10, connecting from a personal computer at home.

I and a few others have had the same problem a few years ago (made a thread about it, even) and it got fixed eventually.

This time around it's a bit worse because sometimes after I complete the CAPTCHA I get a blank screen like so:



and I'm forced to backtrack. The blank screen keeps on popping up until I exit post mode and refresh the thread page I'm trying to post in. Weird stuff

would appreciate a solution to this

I sure would love to find what's triggering this.. it may be a firewall rule or your IP range / ISP or even your browser................ sigh

If you get a different CF blocked error screenshot it and paste the raytrace # so we can try to back trace it.. Also post date, time (GMT) and URL / what you were doing.

Rukario said:

If you get a different CF blocked error screenshot it and paste the raytrace # so we can try to back trace it.. Also post date, time (GMT) and URL / what you were doing.

Click to expand...

Super zoomed-out

13/2/17, ~11:30 pm GMT. Got this just sending a reply to a PM addressed to me (testing CSS).

OK.. I'm making a list with people's reports..


If anyone else is seeing this challenge screen more then normal or for the first time (after never seeing it), we need your IP, the cloudflare Ray ID, OS you're running, browser and version, and the date/time (GMT) it happened.
Make sure your computer / device is:
a) not on a proxy / VPN
b) scanned for malware/viruses
c) running the latest browser version without any weird or off the wall plugins,

We'll then hook up with CF support and see what is causing this to trigger and go from there to fix it.

I'm not sure if this is related to the above, but ever since the new backend with the new captcha, I can't post new threads. Which sucks, because I want to publish a fanfic.

When I go to "Go Advanced" or to the preview post when creating a new thread, I get the friggin' captcha, but after solving it successfully I am returned to an empty page. No content, no nothing, not even when viewing in "View Source". This happens regardless of whichever of my main browsers I am using (Opera 12 or Firefox 45).

As a content creator, this misfeature makes the community entirely unusable for me for the point of, well, publishing stuff.

EDIT: so the blank screens were mentioned; in my case, refreshing or backtracking doesn't seem to have any effect.

I'm gonna try bridging to my home connection, see if that helps.

EDIT #2: just got back home. The same scenario I wanted to complete, creating a new thread, on the same tab (never logged out of the account) sent me to the captcha when I clicked preview, but unlike before I was correctly redirected back to thread preview once it completed.

However, attempting to preview again once again forces me to captcha. I'm not exactly sure why would Cloudflare assume that I can't fight off a Terminator for not even half a minute so that I can click on "preview post" again, but eh.


(Is there any way to return to the old authentication system? All I had to do back then was to set up browser so that PC's cookies were not deleted; was never asked for a captcha)

It lloks like it some firewall rules that see the html or parsed text in your previews and / or posts and triggers the captcha...

we just readjusted some settings again so lets see if it helps any.