By TOI Tech Desk
Publication Date: 2025-11-18 14:53:00
ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity and Downdetector are among hundreds of websites that are facing massive disruption as Cloudflare investigates technical glitch. Users worldwide experienced significant service interruption after a major technical failure hit the content delivery network provider, Cloudflare. Disruptions commenced around 6:00 AM ET (4.30 pm IST), following an issue with a provider for Cloudflare’s support portal, according to data from the outage-tracking platform Downdetector. The problem rapidly expanded, impacting a broad array of online services that utilise Cloudflare’s network for enhanced security and optimised performance. The company officially confirmed ongoing service degradation, noting reports of widespread 500 errors and API failures across various platforms.
The ‘Cryptic Error’ message explained
Several users, including members of The Times of India tech team checked multiple websites but were met with a baffling message: “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.” This error is generated by Cloudflare’s security challenge system, which is designed to verify users and block malicious traffic. The message essentially signaled that this verification mechanism itself was malfunctioning, preventing users from reaching functional websites.
According to a message on Cloudflare community, this message…
