Nuking the Corporate Web's Web-Scraping Robots
cheapskatesguide.org
Many small website owners can defend their sites from web-crawling robots without big tech's help. Here is how.

Lemmy newb here, not sure if this is right for this /c.

An article I found from someone who hosts their own website and micro-social network, and their experience with web-scraping robots who refuse to respect robots.txt, and how they deal with them.

    • tripflag@lemmy.worldEnglish
      85·
      9 days ago

      and filtering malicious traffic is more important to me than you visiting my services, so I guess that makes us even :-)

        • tripflag@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          8 days ago

          Absolutely; if I was a company, or hosting something important, or something that was intended for the general public, then I’d agree.

          But I’m just an idiot hosting whimsical stuff from my basement, and 99% of it is only of interest for my friends. I know ~everyone in my target audience, and I know that none of them use a VPN for general-purpose browsing.

          As it is, I don’t mind keeping the door open to the general public, but nothing of value will be lost if I need to pull the plug on some more ASN’s to preserve my bandwidth. For example when a guy hopping through a VPN in Sweden decides to download the same zip file thousands of times, wasting terabytes of traffic over a few hours (this happened a week ago).

          • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            I know that none of them use a VPN for general-purpose browsing.

            Interesting. The most common setup I encounter is when the VPN is implemented in the home router - that’s the way it is in my house. If you’re connected to my WiFi, you’re going through my VPN.

            I have a second VPN, which is how my private servers are connected; that’s a bespoke peer-to-peer subnet set up in each machine, but it handles almost no outbound traffic.

            My phone detects when it isn’t connected to my home WiFi and automatically turns on the VPN service for all phone data; that’s probably less common. I used to just leave it on all the time, but VPN over VPN seemed a little excessive.

            It sounds like you were a victim of a DOS attack - not distributed, though. It could have just been done directly; what about it being through a VPN made it worse?

        • El Barto@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          You had me until the “ethically sound position” part.

          You’re saying that Joe Blogger is acting unethically because he doesn’t allow VPN users to visit his site. C’mon, brother.

            • El Barto@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              4 days ago

              You’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that. Targeting sounds like specifically doing it with an agenda.

              What you’re saying the equivalent of being offended that you can’t bring guns inside someone’s private property because they don’t want to, period. “It is not ethical that you forbid me from exercising my constitutional rights of bearing arms in your house. How dare you not allowing me to put my AK-47 in your kitchen counter!”

              Nope. I said that if someone doesn’t want to deal with VPN users because it’s more hassle than worth (e.g. bots), then so be it. Joe Blogger may get 20 visitors a month instead of 24. Oh the horror!

              I am a huge advocate of privacy laws. But if Joe Blogger doesn’t allow me in his personal website, eh. I might try archive.org.

              • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                Hold on a tick.

                Specifically blacklisting a group of users because of the technology they use is, by definition, “targeting”, right? I mean, if not, what qualifies as “targeting” for you?

                And, yeah. Posting a sign saying “No Nazi symbolism is allowed in this establishment” is - I would claim - targeting Nazis. Same as posting a sign, “no blacks allowed” - you’re saying that’s not targeting?

                I know we’re arguing definitions and have strayed from the original topic, but I think this is an important point to clarify, since you took specific objection to my use of it in that context; and because I’m being pedantic about it.

                • El Barto@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 day ago

                  Specifically blacklisting a group of users because of the technology they use is, by definition, “targeting”, right? I mean, if not, what qualifies as “targeting” for you?

                  You may be right. I guess it’s a matter of semantics. But the way you described it sounded more nefarious. “I’ll target this group of VPN users because fuck them, I hope they all die in a tsunami!!!” when it’s more like “ugh, another VPN bot. The 9th this hour and I’m hungry. You know what - I’ll just block VPN altogether and go fix me a sandwich.” Maybe that’s just my perception.

                  But anyway - it’s Joe Blogger’s machine, at his home, for him to do whatever he likes. Some rando from the street knocks on the door and says “excuse me, do you mind if I send an e-mail from your computer?” Joe Blogger can perfectly say no, not even an excuse is owed.

                  You’d have a point if it was a business or a corporation. Some home machine? Out of billions? Why bother?

                  I guess we’re two pedantic folks. I enjoy these discussions. I sometimes gain some new knowledge out of them.

                  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
                    2·
                    1 day ago

                    But the way you described it sounded more nefarious

                    Oh. Yeah, I don’t think they’re being malicious; I just get frustrated with that sort of behavior. The primary DNS servers for usps.com, neakasa.com, and vitacost.com all block DNS queries from Mullvad’s DNS servers, and one of them blocks all traffic from at least some of Mullvad’s exit nodes. It means I have to waste time working around these blocks, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to take down the house VPN just to visit their stupid sites. So, I hard-code DNS entries for them, and route traffic to the one through one of my VPSes. It’s annoying, a waste of my time, and I’m just generally offended by the whiff of surveillance state about it, even when that’s not the reason why they’re doing it.

                    Really, it boils down to the fact that I’m offended by the presumption that their (not OP, but VPN-hostile companies in general) anti-spam or whatever they’re trying to accomplish takes priority over my right to privacy. So, yeah; I generally have a bone to pick with any site that’s hostile to VPNs.

                    Maybe that’s just my perception.

                    I have no doubt at all that you’re right. And, they have no obligation to accommodate me (which I think is not true for companies I’m trying to do business with).

                    I’m just uppity about the topic, is all.

                    I enjoy these discussions. I sometimes gain some new knowledge out of them.

                    I’ll happily have a cordial disagreement with anyone arguing in good faith. It’s echo-ey enough, and these are good conversations.

    • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
      41·
      8 days ago

      They block VPN exit nodes. Why bother hosting a web site if you don’t want anyone to read your content?

      Fuck that noise. My privacy is more important to me than your blog.

      It’s a minimalist private blog that sets no 3rd party cookies and loads no 3rd party resources. I presume that alleviates your concerns? 😜

    • klu9@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      A problem with this approach was that many readers use VPN’s and other proxies that change IP addresses virtually every time they use them. For that reason and because I believe in protecting every Internet user’s privacy as much as possible, I wanted a way of immediately unblocking visitors to my website without them having to reveal personal information like names and email addresses.

      I recently spent a few weeks on a new idea for solving this problem. With some help from two knowledgeable users on Blue Dwarf, I came up with a workable approach two weeks ago. So far, it looks like it works well enough. To summarize this method, when a blocked visitor reaches my custom 403 error page, he is asked whether he would like to be unblocked by having his IP address added to the website’s white list. If he follows that hypertext link, he is sent to the robot test page. If he answers the robot test question correctly, his IP address is automatically added to the white list. He doesn’t need to enter it or even know what it is. If he fails the test, he is told to click on the back button in his browser and try again. After he has passed the robot test, Nginx is commanded to reload its configuration file (PHP command: shell_exec(“sudo nginx -s reload”);), which causes it to immediately accept the new whitelist entry, and he is granted immediate access. He is then allowed to visit cheapskatesguide as often as he likes for as long as he continues to use the same IP address. If he switches IP addresses in the future, he has about a one in twenty chance of needing to pass the robot test again each time he switches IP addresses. My hope is that visitors who use proxies will only have to pass the test a few times a year. As the whitelist grows, I suppose that frequency may decrease. Of course, it will reach a non-zero equilibrium point that depends on the churn in the IP addresses being used by commercial web-hosting companies. In a few years, I may have a better idea of where that equilibrium point is.