Posted on
by

In the past days both Heinz and Ric alerted me that my RSS feeds wasn’t reachable for them. My log files quickly showed what was happening, Netnewswire, FeedBin and TinyTinyRSS were blocked by my hoster as ‘bad bots’ whenever they tried to reach my RSS feed:

[Thu Mar 26 03:43:49.372015 2020] [:error] [pid 501480] [client 95.143.172.147:48116] [client 95.143.172.147] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Matched phrase "tt-rss.org" at REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent. [file "/etc/httpd/modsecurity.d/modsecurity_localrules.conf"] [line "2"] [id "350001"] [msg "Bad Bot Rule: Black Bot detected. "] [hostname "www.zylstra.org"] [uri "/blog/feed/"] [unique_id "XnwW5ZujCwgIM-xP-57OfAAAAAE"], referer: http://www.zylstra.org/blog/feed/
[Thu Mar 26 04:06:25.506843 2020] [:error] [pid 452702] [client 157.230.163.157:51478] [client 157.230.163.157] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Matched phrase "Feedbin" at REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent. [file "/etc/httpd/modsecurity.d/modsecurity_localrules.conf"] [line "2"] [id "350001"] [msg "Bad Bot Rule: Black Bot detected. "] [hostname "www.zylstra.org"] [uri "/blog/feed/"] [unique_id "XnwcMZhpXdX8450kb5sLbgAAABI"]
[Thu Mar 26 05:45:54.289670 2020] [:error] [pid 681301] [client 69.172.186.78:39628] [client 69.172.186.78] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Matched phrase "NetNewsWire" at REQUEST_HEADERS:user-agent. [file "/etc/httpd/modsecurity.d/modsecurity_localrules.conf"] [line "2"] [id "350001"] [msg "Bad Bot Rule: Black Bot detected. "] [hostname "www.zylstra.org"] [uri "/blog/comments/feed/"] [unique_id "XnwzggS4@-ngUalhqeVluAAAAA4"]

I submitted a ticket with my hoster Thursday but they have been unusually unresponsive this time. So for the time being I created a Feedburner RSS feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/InterdependentThoughts, so at least those that have this issue can resolve it. However Feedburner has been part of Google since 2007, which means the service hasn’t evolved apart from that it tracks your reading habits. So I’m on the lookout for a replacement service that does the same as Feedburner, except that it isn’t Feedburner, so sans the tracking.

[UPDATE 2020-03-30: the blocked feedreaders are now unblocked again. I’ll keep the Feedburner feed alive for now. Will likely rename it to something under my own domain [no longer possible], and my try to replace it with something like granary.io]

14 reactions on “Is There A Feedburner Alternative?”

  1. I don’t think I’ve been seeing your feed either! That’s using NetNewsWire on iOS.

    There isn’t really an alternative that I would recommend. Hosting from your own site is the best solution. I guess people could subscribe to your Micro.blog feed.

    • It seems my micro.blog feeds don’t work (too many http redirects).

      You’re right self-hosting is the best thing. Not doing away with that, just want to add a (temporary) alternative. Listed Feedburner now with the other RSS feeds in the sidebar.

      • Alas “The MyBrand service is deprecated. Your existing domains will continue to work, but you cannot add new ones anymore after July 31, 2019“

    • Thank you for the tip Jan. I tried it. Granary doesn’t do RSS->RSS it seems, leaving me with them parsing the HTML. That sadly means that most postings won’t get found (I don’t post everything on the frontpage). Ah wait, I could use the ATOM feed.

      • The resulting feed has a very odd mix of postings, missing the recent ones. Weird.

    • Yes, oddly enough a few specific readers are getting blocked. Feedbin, NetNewsWire and TinyTinyRSS

  7. Yes, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s only for specific feed readers though, based on the user agent that is set. I had it once before because the feedreader in question used the no longer existing Google Reader as user agent. Same seems to be true for why NetNewsWire is getting blocked. Others might have gotten blogged for the frequency with which it calls the feed URL.

Comments are closed.