Indiscriminate IPS blockades ordered by LaLiga are wreaking havoc on the Internet. It is no longer only that millions of users cannot access thousands of websites: there is companies that are losing income for advertising or for sales.
From WorldOfSoftware we have contacted some of those companies to learn first -hand what is the impact they are noticing on their businesses. These days a list of affected has been launched in which some companies try to estimate economic losses, although as we will see in the following testimonies, measuring this impact is really complicated.
Of 70,000 euros of monthly income to 40,000
There are some more clear cases in that regard. It is for example what happens with Onlytenis.com, a sporting store that operates in various countries but for example in Spain specializes in tennis and paddle articles.
María José ValueCommerce Manager in the company, explained how for a long time they make use of a cloudflare payment plan, but not even that serves the blockades: “On weekends it is crazy”, because they clearly notice how both the activity in their store and sales.
In fact he explains, they have compared the income of the months without IPS blockades and the recent months, which have. “Before we entered 70,000 euros a month, this month They have become 40,000 or 50,000 euros“.
However, he explained, for the company “it is very difficult to demonstrate” and relate that decrease in income to LaLiga IPS blockages. For her there is no other explanation than these technical blockages, and he knows that at some point in the payment process there is a problem. “At first it affected more,” he says, “and now it seems that less, but if a client arrives and the web carries it but cannot do Checkout, he goes to another platform.”
The problems also extend to online advertising that they also have: for months they never had a problem, but the blockages and football are causing that part to be affected, although It is very difficult to evaluate the impact. The search engine they use in your store stops working totally or partially, she tells us, and the cycle is always the same with these problems. “They last all weekend, and on Monday the orders begin to activate.”
For onlyten the impact is being direct and very negative, because as it explains value, “we had a growth trend of 20% and now everything has stagnated, this does not go 100%.” It shows other desperate with the situation, because it does not have solutions or resources to go to: “We cannot deactivate cloudflare, the remedy is worse than the disease“.
That’s: the services of this CDNS provider avoid for example denial attacks, and disable these services can end up being a significant cybersecurity problem.
Getting rid of cloudflare is not the solution
José Ángel Martínez He is the founder of Ninjalabs – which gives WordPress support services or SEO audits – and generationxbox administrator, and has seen impact on both businesses. In the first case, he tells us, those affected are the clients they manage and who make use of Cloudflare. With the second, your community for Xbox users, it does estimate that the losses are about 800 euros per weekend due to blockages.
As was the case with Onlytenis, in the case of online stores those customers see how every time there is their websites are blocked at some point. “Our agency manages some online stores and When the blockages are produced, they cut the payment catwalk“He explains.
It is a serious problem, because as it explains, in those shops sales are made but they are not registered:
When the client goes to pay, normally the payment platforms for security lead you to their platform, for example Redsys. With these blockages the customer arrives, pays and believes that the purchase has made, but this is not registered in the store because the catwalk that has to return to the online trade does not inject the transaction data.
In fact, he explains, that causes the client to believe that everything has gone well, but that trade does not know anything. “There are customers who are claiming requests from March”, and that is when online stores have to investigate and compare data to know who made what requests not registered and be able to complete the process normally, which is especially cumbersome and delicate.
The solution in some of the services they manage is to directly remove cloudflare. “With some we tried the payment plan but even with that they are saved from the blockages,” so they ended up taking it away. By removing cloudflare the exhibition as we said is greater, but from Ninjalabs they mitigate problems with various rules.
Even so, these clients notice other problems: their servers then consume many more resources, because they have to request bots that arrive from everywhere and that would normally be stopped by the Cloudflare service. Suddenly infrastructure needs rise, and on top of the attempts to manage bots can end up blocking legitimate traffic. A true nightmare, Martínez explains.
“It is more a matter of image and helplessness”
HTCmanía is a well -known mobile users forum that has also been affected by these indiscriminate IPS blockages. Its creator and owner confirmed it, Jorge Burruecowhich told us that “both the payment service and the free cloudflare has given us problems” because “they have ended up blocking all the IPS” that uses its platform.
Even so, he explains, the blockages are irregular. “It does not always happen in all the big games. I do not know if it is random or forget, but for example on Saturday there were no blockages on my page. Yes on Sunday,” he explains. Burrueco adds that his exposure is relative, but sensitive:
“As you know, it only affects Movistar, Digi fiber connections, and some more operator. Taking into account that the percentage of users who enter HTCMania must be around 65%, that remaining 35% is fiber from Spain and other countries. And from there, we have Movistar, Vodafone, etc. I would say that around 20% of users are affected when there is football.”
The traditional solution for users when avoiding these blockages is to connect through a VPN, as we have previously commented, and Burrueco confirms that a good option in that sense is to use the free VPN Cloudflare Warp, “which works perfectly” according to him.
Htcmanía is not an online store; Your business model is that of advertising, and there is also a problem, because it has confirmed that There are 20% falls from traffic When there are blockages about when there are no.
That, of course, makes the possible return for advertising income can become important, and although it does not have a clear accounts, “that can be assessed in losses, although at this time it is complicated.” In addition, “if this goes more there will be a big economic impact.”
He pointed to the list of affected that is serving as a clue of the economic impact, but insists that it is difficult to estimate it. For him, however,
“It is more a matter of image and helplessness, why cannot HTCmania be accessed from the computer when Madrid plays?”
“We do not sell, the damage is reputational”
The Seville Bar Association is in another spectrum of the cases in which LaLiga IPS blocks have impacted. We talked with Javier Fernándezhead of computer science of this agency, which is special because “we are a public law corporation” and have no income such as other cases we have talked about.
This body provides services to the legal community, but it is a public law corporation. “We don’t sell, so we don’t have that problem,” he explains. Your problem is another, because in your case: “Damage is reputational and image“Fernández stands out.
“What this expert has confirmed is that” every weekend we hang the page. It can be accessed from the mobile network, but not from the fixed. It has been for about a month, especially Sundays. Fridays or Mondays is not cut or weird. “
Although they do not sell products or have an advertising model that the agency supports, they do provide important services for lawyers who use this platform. If those lawyers want to access during blockages – perhaps to advance work on the weekend – they cannot do it with the blocked page.
In fact, Fernández comments how they came to contact Cloudflare to know what to do, but they have not given them solutions and simply recommend not to abandon the service. In the opinion of this computer manager, what is happening is absurd, because “All users are being sanctioned“, both to those who are committing the infraction – the IPTV that retransmit matches illegally – and to companies and users with legitimate websites.
It is something that is a constant during these last weeks, indeed. They are paying fair for sinners.
Image | Howard Bouchevereau | LaLiga
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