What is BinaryCanary?

BinaryCanary is a bot in the monitoring and analytics bots category, operated by Binary Canary.

Bot name
BinaryCanary
Operator
Binary Canary
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Not confirmed
robots.txt user agent
BinaryCanary
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About BinaryCanary

BinaryCanary monitors websites for availability and performance issues.

Monitoring bots check uptime, performance and page changes on behalf of a site owner or a third party. Allow the services you run yourself and exclude them from analytics so they do not inflate page views.

BinaryCanary user agent

BinaryCanary identifies itself with this user agent string:

  • Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Chirp/1.0; +http://www.binarycanary.com)

Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.

How to block BinaryCanary in robots.txt

We have not confirmed whether BinaryCanary follows robots.txt. Add a rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.

Block BinaryCanary from the whole site

User-agent: BinaryCanary
Disallow: /

Block BinaryCanary from some folders

User-agent: BinaryCanary
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /search

Allow BinaryCanary only on some folders

User-agent: BinaryCanary
Allow: /blog/
Disallow: /

Allow BinaryCanary and block other crawlers

User-agent: BinaryCanary
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Things to know

  • Each host needs its own file. Rules on www.example.com do not apply to shop.example.com.
  • A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it. Once you add a User-agent: BinaryCanary group, BinaryCanary ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take BinaryCanary from BinaryCanary's user agent; check Binary Canary's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.
  • Crawlers cache robots.txt, so changes can take up to a day to apply. Disallow stops crawling but does not remove pages already collected or indexed.

Limits of robots.txt

  1. BinaryCanary may not follow the rule. robots.txt is a request that nothing enforces, and we have not confirmed that BinaryCanary follows it. Check your logs after adding a rule.
  2. The user agent could be fake. robots.txt matches the name a request claims. Anyone can send BinaryCanary's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by Binary Canary's robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real BinaryCanary from a fake one.

Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.

Who should care about BinaryCanary

Publishers

Allow BinaryCanary if it is a service you use, and keep its visits out of page views and ad requests either way.

Transfon Security for publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

BinaryCanary is not a person. Exclude it from campaign and conversion data so reports reflect real visitors.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

Allow BinaryCanary only if it works for your store, and keep it away from cart and checkout.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

If BinaryCanary is a service you use, allow it on the endpoints it needs and block it elsewhere.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block BinaryCanary with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows BinaryCanary by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.

Transfon Security

Control BinaryCanary on your site

  • See every BinaryCanary visit and the pages it reads
  • Spot bots that fake trusted crawler names
  • Block, allow or rate limit BinaryCanary with one rule
  • Works with or without robots.txt support

Frequently asked questions

What is BinaryCanary?

BinaryCanary is a bot in the monitoring and analytics bots category, operated by Binary Canary. BinaryCanary monitors websites for availability and performance issues.

Does BinaryCanary respect robots.txt?

We have not confirmed whether BinaryCanary follows robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped, and block it by user agent if it did not.

How do I block BinaryCanary?

Add "User-agent: BinaryCanary" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "http://www.binarycanary.com" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.

Is robots.txt enough to block BinaryCanary?

No. robots.txt is voluntary, so BinaryCanary may not follow it, and anyone can send BinaryCanary's user agent, so a fake BinaryCanary ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.

Should I block BinaryCanary?

Monitoring bots check uptime, performance and page changes on behalf of a site owner or a third party. Allow the services you run yourself and exclude them from analytics so they do not inflate page views.

Related bots

All monitoring and analytics bots · Full bot directory

See Which Bots Visit Your Site

Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.

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