How to block Swifteq Link Checker
Operated by Swfiteq Ltd. Help Center Export is a Zendesk-approved app that integrates with any Zendesk help center and helps the customers with these tasks: Export all your articles and any meta-data: title, section, link, labels, updated time. Export all references to internal and external docs. Detect and export broken links and images for each article. In order to check for broken links the app is using a bot that attempts to access each link present in help center articles and check the response for errors.
How it identifies itself
SwifteqLinkChecker
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: Swifteq Disallow: /
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 ~* "(SwifteqLinkChecker|Swifteq|Swifteq Link Checker)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "SwifteqLinkChecker" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Swifteq" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Swifteq Link Checker" 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 "SwifteqLinkChecker") or (http.user_agent contains "Swifteq") or (http.user_agent contains "Swifteq Link Checker")
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 (['SwifteqLinkChecker', 'Swifteq', 'Swifteq Link Checker'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: Swifteq Link Checker');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
Swifteq Link Checker publishes a token, so the directive above will work for as long as it keeps honouring it — and nothing except its own good manners makes it. 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.