Reviews for Silk - Privacy Pass Client
Silk - Privacy Pass Client by Cloudflare Research
Review by Firefox user 13667315
Rated 2 out of 5
by Firefox user 13667315, 7 years agoIt earns a star above the minimum because it is functional, for it intended purpose. It's so aggressive, however, that it destroys user experience and makes utilizing Cloudflare sites near unbearable.
It does get past Cloudflare captchas, which are impassable on some sites due to an infinite loop. However, on any page featuring dynamic elements, multiple frames, or anything else beyond your basic HTML setup it flips out. It constantly reloads the pages for each element (resulting in a jarring, headache-inducing white flash between reloads), using a ticket every time too. It's rare to see this happen less than 3 times on any page to even start, really.
Discus is a prominent example of an element where this will happen. Clicking "show comments" will cause the page to reload another several times, then scrolling down will cause it to constantly reload/reset. Pages with video streaming freakout and oftentimes don't work as a result. You'll see that on the initial load the video player is present, but after several white flashes it'll be gone.
It's become my practice to only enable this for a single purpose; when encountering a page with an impassable catpcha, I enable this add-on, validate it using another Cloudflare site, get to the page I initially wanted/needed to visit, and immediately disable it again.
It'd be much more convenient if Cloudflare offered some means of whitelisting for users. I'm only in this mess because I got stuck with a new router and IP following a technician visit.
It does get past Cloudflare captchas, which are impassable on some sites due to an infinite loop. However, on any page featuring dynamic elements, multiple frames, or anything else beyond your basic HTML setup it flips out. It constantly reloads the pages for each element (resulting in a jarring, headache-inducing white flash between reloads), using a ticket every time too. It's rare to see this happen less than 3 times on any page to even start, really.
Discus is a prominent example of an element where this will happen. Clicking "show comments" will cause the page to reload another several times, then scrolling down will cause it to constantly reload/reset. Pages with video streaming freakout and oftentimes don't work as a result. You'll see that on the initial load the video player is present, but after several white flashes it'll be gone.
It's become my practice to only enable this for a single purpose; when encountering a page with an impassable catpcha, I enable this add-on, validate it using another Cloudflare site, get to the page I initially wanted/needed to visit, and immediately disable it again.
It'd be much more convenient if Cloudflare offered some means of whitelisting for users. I'm only in this mess because I got stuck with a new router and IP following a technician visit.
712 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by Jet Girl, 2 months agoUseless. Took me to a page with a Cloudflare humanity check to proceed. The exact flerfing problem I was trying to fix. Cloudflare needs to fix their shit.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Manfredi, 5 months agoPointless addon, it just doesn't work. I've tried it for months. Right now I'm trying to access a website from almost half an hour, the page keeps on saying "just a moment" while reloading itself againg and again. A nightmare. Fuck Cloudshare
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14735936, 6 months agoNo longer works - now the interactive challenge shows "FAILURE!"
Not worth the bandwidth to download! - Rated 1 out of 5by rhokstar, 6 months agoI've been using Privacy Pass to help reduce CAPTCHAs, but a recent update has introduced some concerning behavior that potential users should be aware of.
Pros:
- Can help reduce CAPTCHAs on some websites
- Open-source and maintained by Cloudflare
Cons:
- Recently started opening new tabs without user permission
- Asks for "attester" verification in an intrusive manner
- Interrupts browsing experience unexpectedly
The extension now opens a new tab without warning, asking users to verify an "attester." While this might be intended to improve transparency, the implementation is disruptive and feels like a violation of user control. This behavior seems to go against Firefox's add-on policies regarding unexpected actions and user experience. It's particularly concerning for an extension that's supposed to improve browsing, not interrupt it. I've reported this to Mozilla for review. In the meantime, users should be aware of this intrusive behavior before installing. If you value a smooth browsing experience without unexpected interruptions, you might want to consider alternatives or wait for this issue to be addressed. I hope the developers can find a less disruptive way to implement their verification process. Until then, I can't recommend this extension. - Rated 1 out of 5by James E. LaBarre, 6 months agoInstalled on Firefox, and the extension *****CANNOT***** be enabled. It's just as broken as Cloudflare itself. This extension CLAIMS to be able to stop the perpetual "Verify you are human" loop, but obviously their programming of the extension is just as shoddy as their filtering site. Verify I'm Human???? Cloudflare doesn't even have humans to answer how to FIX their BROKEN system.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Octaviopk, 8 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by DogancanYr, 8 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Aa, 8 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 18364689, 9 months ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by Illuminator, 9 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17422731, 9 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Anthony Castanza, 10 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by user 0928524114, a year agoNot working even after latest update. New tab opens as shown on screenshot, sometimes fails to verify. Even if the new tab verifies, I have to verify once again on the site that requested it. So that's solving waiting two captchas each time to load and verify. The next time same story! What's the point then? Solving twice the amount of captchas and not even earning tickets for next captcha relief? No thanks. Useless addon made to waste users time.
- Rated 5 out of 5by George Pchelkin, a year ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14881252, a year agoWhile the github has been updated since the last review claiming it might have been abandoned, it still doesn't work. The privacy pass page will pop up just as often as cloudflair normally would, and will in fact occasionally fail to properly identify you as human rather than a bot, making the extension entirely pointless
- Rated 1 out of 5by 90alx, a year ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Bobby, a year agoHas stopped working since the past few weeks. According to the people at GitHub it's indeed broken and will require fixing. Unfortunately there have been no Git commits ever since, so it might be an abandonware.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 17863214, a year agoUseless now. hCaptcha dropped support and Cloudflare appears to have done so as well. Any site protected by Cloudflare just goes into an endless loop of "Are you human?". It's a sad state of the usability of the web that such a plugin is needed in the first place.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18106702, a year ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by ethcat, a year agoThis is how human browse the web today. It's not Privacy Pass, it's Human Pass.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Geex, a year agoDoesn't work at all, and also prevents sites from working correctly. Trashcan
- Rated 5 out of 5by Efiyo, a year ago