no, it's a fake website. doesn't matter how you connect to it if you use bogus TX/contracts

The problem goes well beyond just HiveSigner, Cloudflare has essentially been taking over the internet.

PeakD, Ecency (The website), Hive Blog, and LeoFinance are all also served through Cloudflare.

Cloudflare essentially breaks the trust model of the internet, 14.4% of all websites use them. Here's a simplified idea of what's going on here.

When you connect to a secure website, one with a padlock in your address bar, it's supposed to indicate that only you and the website can read the contents of your connection, like so.

`You <==🔒==> Website`

A Level 3/4 DDoS mitigation service would look like this.
```
       Akamai
You <===💻🔒===> Website
```

In this example, your connection passes through the mitigation service and remains encrypted, it can't read the contents of your connection.

Here's what a Level 7 mitigation service like Cloudflare looks like


`You <=🔒=> Cloudflare <=🔒=> Website`

In this case, you're establishing an encrypted connection *to Cloudflare*, not to the website. Cloudflare can see the contents of anything exchanged over this connection, messages, passwords, etc.

Cloudflare adds an unnecessary layer of trust to the internet and any website using them is by default less trustworthy by default as you not only have to trust the website, but also trust that Cloudflare won't get hacked, leak your info accidentally, or maliciously steal your info.

If you're wondering if that's happened before, [yes, it has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed).

---

If you're worried about this, the best thing to do is encourage PeakD/LeoFinance/etc to stop using Cloudflare. This will improve the privacy and security of everyone using Hive.

Here's some more info about the Cloudflare problem.

https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/stay-away-from-cloudflare.html

http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2016/07/14/cloudflare-we-have-a-problem/

https://blog.torproject.org/trouble-cloudflare

If you want first hand experience with how much they suck and how many websites use them, try using [Tor Browser](https://www.torproject.org/) as your sole method of browsing the web for a week.

Generally, the more CAPTCHAs you get, the more desperate a service is to track you. They give you an excessive amount on purpose to try to force you to reveal your actual IP address by connecting without Tor.

---

While making sure I went over everything in this post, I discovered that PeakD is not a free and open source project. I would recommend avoiding using them at all because of that. Cryptocurrency would not exist if it weren't for the free and open source movement and the cypherpunks, a non-free client is essentially a slap in the face to the foundation of cryptocurrency.

A project being free and open source is essential to maintaining transparancy and trust, it allows the public to audit the code and if need be, make their own version of it in the event the original developer is no longer trusted.

Hive itself would not exist if it weren't for Steem being free and open source, and everyone would've been screwed after Sun's takover if it wasn't.

The thing is, they can't shut down Bitcoin unless they take out nearly the entire internet along side it. It's been decentralised in a way that makes that near impossible.

They can cripple it, sure, but decentralised exchanges exist, and an attempted ban of bitcoin would just bring even more attention to it. It would be ultimately be a good thing in the long run if a major government attempted to ban Bitcoin.

An attempted ban by a major government is essentially a massive stamp of approval saying that the technology works and they can't control it.

Just look at Russia, they've been trying to crack down on cryptocurrencies as well as usage of privacy tools like Tor, I2P, and Freenet. The results have been a complete backfire so far and have lead to even more usage.

You can see Tor's usage increasing in Russia over the last three years [here](https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2017-01-01&end=2020-12-31&country=ru&events=on). I expect tor usage will go up even more with the upcoming release of Tor Browser 10.0. If you're in a country with uncensored internet, I highly recommend installing [Tor's Snowflake extension](https://snowflake.torproject.org/) as it will help out those who do have censored internet.

Metamask is a browser extension that lets you run DAPPS without being part of the Ethereum network as an Ethereum Node.