Overcast is a bot in the feed fetchers category, operated by Overcast Radio.
Overcast is a podcast player application, and its bot fetches RSS feeds and audio files from podcast hosting servers. This keeps the podcast directory and episodes updated for its users.
Feed fetchers poll RSS and Atom feeds for readers, aggregators and podcast apps. They usually request feeds only, so they are cheap to allow. Watch for fetchers that pull full pages at high rates.
Overcast identifies itself with this user agent string:
Overcast/1.0 Podcast Sync (123 subscribers; feed-id=456789; +http://overcast.fm/)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.
We have not confirmed whether Overcast 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.
User-agent: Overcast Disallow: /
User-agent: Overcast Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: Overcast Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: Overcast Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: Overcast group, Overcast ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.Overcast from Overcast's user agent; check Overcast Radio's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
Overcast fetches pages when your links are shared or syndicated. Keep it allowed so previews and feeds work, but leave it out of page views and ad requests.
Transfon Security for publishersWhen ads or posts are shared, Overcast fetches the landing page. Those hits are not clicks, so keep them out of campaign reports.
Transfon Security for advertisersProduct links shared in chats and feeds are fetched by Overcast. Keep it allowed so previews show the right image and price.
Transfon Security for e-commerceAllow Overcast on public pages so shared links preview well, and keep it off the app.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows Overcast 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
Overcast is a bot in the feed fetchers category, operated by Overcast Radio. Overcast is a podcast player application, and its bot fetches RSS feeds and audio files from podcast hosting servers. This keeps the podcast directory and episodes updated for its users.
We have not confirmed whether Overcast 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.
Add "User-agent: Overcast" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Overcast/" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Overcast may not follow it, and anyone can send Overcast's user agent, so a fake Overcast ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
Feed fetchers poll RSS and Atom feeds for readers, aggregators and podcast apps. They usually request feeds only, so they are cheap to allow. Watch for fetchers that pull full pages at high rates.
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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