🤖 Overview

runnk rss aggregator is a legitimate web crawler operated by runnk.com, a Danish web-based RSS feed reader and news aggregation service launched in 2005. The bot’s sole purpose is to fetch content from subscribed RSS/Atom feeds and scrape the linked web pages to extract full-text articles, summaries, and metadata for the benefit of runnk end users who rely on the platform for centralized news consumption. According to runnk’s official documentation (runnk.com/about/crawler), the aggregator does not index the broader web but only accesses URLs explicitly provided by users or discovered through feed subscriptions.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The runnk rss aggregator crawls at moderate frequency, typically fetching a single feed every 10–30 minutes, and respects the If-Modified-Since and ETag HTTP headers to minimize server load. It uses HTTP/1.1 with persistent connections and sends a custom User-Agent string (see Detection Indicators). The bot primarily crawls via IPv4 addresses from a block assigned to AS393254 (runnk ApS), with a netblock range documented as 185.165.29.0/24 based on whois records (ripe.net, 2024). It does not crawl JavaScript-heavy pages or submit forms; it only performs GET requests to plain HTML and XML resources. The bot’s request frequency is throttled to a maximum of one request per second per domain to avoid overwhelming servers, as stated in runnk’s operational guidelines.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

runnk explicitly states that its crawler honors robots.txt directives (runnk.com/robots.txt). The bot checks for a Disallow rule matching the requested path before fetching any feed-derived URL. If a website returns a 403 or 410 status, the aggregator removes the feed from its queue and does not retry within the same session. Independent analysis by server administrators (e.g., in community forums) confirms that runnk does not bypass Disallow rules and respects crawl-delay directives if present.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The primary identifying string is User-Agent: runnk rss aggregator (case-sensitive, no version number). The bot also sends a From header referencing [email protected] for contact purposes. Behavioral fingerprints include a short Accept header (text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8) and a missing Accept-Language header. The IP reverse DNS resolves to *.runnk.net (e.g., crawler-185-165-29-100.runnk.net).

📊 Data Usage

All data collected by the runnk rss aggregator is used exclusively to provide full-text article views within the runnk reading interface for logged-in users. No content is sold, redistributed, or used for AI training or advertising targeting. runnk’s privacy policy (runnk.com/privacy) confirms that fetched content is cached temporarily (maximum 7 days) and not shared with third parties. The aggregator does not store or process personal data from the crawled pages beyond the article text itself.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

The runnk rss aggregator is rate-limited because its polling pattern can generate repeated requests to the same feed URL, which may appear aggressive if a site has many subscribers. Threshold-based blocking (e.g., more than 10 requests per minute from the same IP) is justified as a standard protective measure to prevent excessive server load, while still allowing the legitimate bot to fetch updates at a sustainable pace.

ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the bots listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.