I tend to IP-block Micro$oft IP's that are not part of the handful of CIDR's that are the well-known bing bot (or msn bot) IP's.
One such CIDR that I'm blocking (in the router) is 52.167.0.0/16.
Since Nov/2020 that cidr has been relatively quiet, a total of 10 different IP's have been blocked. Various ports, not just http/https. 6 of those IP's were trying to reach my web server. None of these IP's have a reverse DNS host name - except one.
Today I see that 52.167.144.44 (msnbot-52-167-144-44.search.msn.com) was blocked.
Naturally, this is a surprise.
Has anyone else seen what could be legit MSFT search bot hits from that IP or the wider 52.167/16 range?
