Question about Cloudflare logging

Privacy
1

I was having a chat with an individual who hosts an “anonymous” file sharing website and he uses Cloudflare to proxy his HTTP downloads which he has proven to be in the hundreds of terabytes per day. I was trying to explain to him that as an American why I would be wary of downloading a file from a website whose front end is proxied by Cloudflare and uses Google Cloud Platform infinite storage loophole and finally Cloudflare servers to download potentially illegal files.

His argument was that due to the enormous volume of logs that Cloudflare accumulates (something like 20 gigs compressed every second) that they are purged so frequently that nothing could ever be tied back to you as a downloader.

I guess I never really thought about this before and wanted to bounce that notion off the people here. In theory it sounds legit - like having a conversation in Grand Central Station during peak hours. No one would be able to eavesdrop. But with my somewhat limited knowledge of IDS software like Sguil, Snort, etc it seems it would be trivial for Cloudflare to filter out 99% of the chaff and find people abusing their services for illegal content.

2

Yeah, getting useful analytics from their logs is like half of Cloudflare’s entire business model. Cloudflare can also already scan media for illegal content in real time, as you access it.

At an absolute minimum all traffic data is stored for 30 days.

3

Source?

4

Source for what?

5

For @jonah claims

6

It may not be trivial but well within their competency. In fact, Cloudflare may even be required by law to do so in various countries they have presence in. To their credit (and if I’m not mistaken) Cloudflare does have a history of fighting senseless patent trolls and intrusive subpoenas.

Anonymity is tough to achieve in this model. Utilising hidden services over mixnets like Tor or I2P is one way to do so, but even then, it isn’t that easy.