How to block NewsBlur Page Fetcher
Operated by NewsBlur. NewsBlur Page Fetcher is a bot operated by NewsBlur, an RSS feed reader and news aggregation service. It fetches content from websites on behalf of subscribers, with the user agent number indicating how many users are subscribed to that feed.
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the
# operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it.
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(NewsBlur Page Fetcher)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "NewsBlur Page Fetcher" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "NewsBlur Page Fetcher")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['NewsBlur Page Fetcher'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: NewsBlur Page Fetcher');
}
}
});
A rule on the user agent is a rule on a string it chose
The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.