This tutorial is deprecated in favour of Exposed IP addresses · Cloudflare DNS docs
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This tutorial post covers the following messages:
Some of your DNS only records are exposing IPs that are proxied through Cloudflare
or
This record exposes the IP behind example.com which you have proxied through Cloudflare. To fix this, change its proxy status.
Normally your IP address is hidden by Cloudflare and any lookups would see a Cloudflare IP address rather than that of your origin server. This message appears when a DNS record is exposing the origin IP address.
There are several possible reasons why this might be the case, in some cases you can hide the IP and remove the warning, but in many cases, you need to expose the IP for your non HTTP(S) services to work.
-
The
web subdomain
In this example, the warning shows on the record for www, since that is set to and not 
. If the subdomain is only used for web traffic, you can edit the to and remove the warning.
-
The
non-web subdomain
In this example, the warning shows on the FTP hostname. Cloudflare does not proxy non HTTP(S) services such as FTP. If you require a direct connection over the subdomain, you must leave it. Alternatively, the generally recommended approach is to remove the FTP record and specify the IP address of your server directly in your FTP client to connect.
-
The mail records
Mail records are the most common to receive this warning. It may be shown on a subdomain unproxied for email, or on the MX record if Cloudflare has generated a direct connect hostname so your emails work.
A record
MX record
If you have one server that hosts both your website and emails, you will not be able to remove this warning. For emails to work, the IP of your server has to be exposed as Cloudflare does not proxy mail traffic. The only way to remove the warning would be to use a 3rd party email host or a separate server to host your emails, if you don’t want your web server IP to be exposed.
Tutorial Reference: CT-18
Reviewed: 07/21
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