Cloudfare is shutting down much of the Internet today
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, there are widespread reports of a major outage with Cloudflare, a service that provides security and traffic management for much of the internet (including ChatGPT, Claude, and others).
You likely do not need to “fix” anything on your end. The “block” is happening at a server level for millions of users.
1. The Immediate Cause (Most Likely)
Cloudflare is currently experiencing a service disruption. When you see “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com,” it usually means your browser is trying to load a security check (to prove you are human) but the Cloudflare server that hosts that check is down or failing. Because the security check never loads, you cannot “pass” it to get to the AI platform.
Status: Many users on X (Twitter), Reddit, and status detectors are reporting the exact same loop today.
Recommendation: Wait. This is a technical problem on their end, not yours. It will likely resolve itself once Cloudflare fixes their servers.
2. Things You Can Try (If you want to be sure)
If you want to double-check that the issue isn’t on your computer, you can try these quick steps. If these don’t work, it confirms the issue is the global outage mentioned above.
Turn off Ad Blockers: Extensions like uBlock Origin, AdBlock, or Privacy Badger can sometimes block the
challenges.cloudflare.comdomain by mistake. Pause them and refresh the page.Disable VPNs: If you are using a VPN, turn it off. Cloudflare often blocks VPN IP addresses or fails to serve the “challenge” to them correctly.
Try “Incognito” or “Private” Mode: Open a new Incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N in Chrome) and try to log in. This bypasses your extensions and cache.
Check Your System Time: Ensure your computer’s clock is set to the correct time and date. If your clock is out of sync, security certificates will fail, blocking the challenge.
Summary
This is likely not your fault. It is a known internet-wide issue occurring today.