Topic: placefile.txt poacher for Blitzortung at 208.113.219.243

[saratogaWX]

I see this in my logs that 208.113.219.243 is pulling my Blitzortung USA placefile.txt every 2 minutes (likely via a cron job).

The 208.113.219.243 IP doesn't have a website per se, but a DNS reverse shows it as

arthur-middleton.dreamhost.com

It is not a normal GRLevel3 fetch since they have URL arguments included and usually only pull new data every 5 minutes.  The every 2 minutes is annoying, and I'm going to block the accesses unless the owner of that website gives me a PM contact to explain why they need it at 2 minute intervals -- the file is only generated every 5 minutes.

  

Ken

[Maumelle Weather]

I'd cut them off, Ken. I gave up a long time ago about asking nicely for others to quit doing crap like that. I would just block the whole CIDR, if it was me.

John

[saratogaWX]

Thanks John... I did put their server deny in .htaccess this morning.  I'll see if that prompts them to contact me or not.

I don't mind regular usage of the Blitzortung USA/GRLevelX placefile for folks using GRLevel3 or GRLevel2/Analyst -- they are quite welcome to use the feed and their individual requests every 5 minutes are not a big deal (about 100Kb/access of a .txt file).  I do mind an automated pull from a script at intervals less than 5 minutes, especially when the IP leads to a non-responding website (so no further research is available to me)   

[Maumelle Weather]

I'm going to venture it was a person that got a hold of the URL when someone else posted it earlier in the year. Don't remember who it was right off hand who did that.

[Jáchym]

I wouldnt even think about this and block them straight away