Hits from FB fwdproxy

started 3 days ago

[SumGuy]

I block FB from hitting my site, at the IP level, in my router, so FB's attempts result in total radio silence. Normally that's not a problem because according to my router's logs I don't see FB even trying to hit my site for for weeks or even months at a time.

But I'm seeing starting May 8 every day some 40+ attempts from a couple of different FB IP ranges, with host names that are always fwdproxy-what-ever-facebook.net.

Any idea what's sparking these hits?

[Brett_Tabke]

Yep, fwdproxy.facebook.net is Facebook’s outbound proxy system.
According to meta, it’s used for a few different things:

• Fetching content for previews when someone posts your URL on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram.
  
• Pulling data for their link safety/anti-spam scanners.
  
• Occasionally for internal AI/data collection when a URL is referenced in their systems.
  

The traffic spike maybe by:

• Someone repeatedly sharing or testing your URLs in FB or Messenger. (competitor?)
  
• A bot/account scraping URLs from somewhere your site appears, then posting them to FB in bulk. (this has happened to us right here)
  

Llama says: "A new Facebook background scan or policy change, they sometimes expand crawling when they tweak their “link preview” or “trust” algorithms."

[CharZe]

The “fwdproxy-whatever-facebook.net” hostnames you’re seeing in the FB IP ranges hitting your site are Facebook’s forward proxy servers. These proxies act as middlemen for Facebook’s own traffic when accessing external sites. Facebook uses these proxies to route requests, likely for security, content scanning, caching, or data filtering purposes.
Since you block FB IPs at the router level, Facebook’s attempts result in no response from your site, but their proxy servers still try regularly, as recent increased attempts since May 8 suggest. This could be due to Facebook intensifying scanning or verification activities, or automated systems retrying access through different proxy IPs.

[tangor]

@CharZe --- Welcome to Webmasterworld!

fb has been both bane and bounty for many---if you let them in. Never found much use for fb traffic of any kind (just my niche) so DENIED works for me.

YMMV