why facebook is flooding my site?

Asked 19/3, 2012 at 16:27 Answered 17/7 at 5:8

Every hour and a half Im getting a flood of requests from http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php.

I know what theses requests should mean, but this behavior is very odd.

On a regular basis (aproximatedly every 1,5 hour), Im getting dozen of these requests per minute to very old posts of my site - and this is giving me a headache since they are not cached...

Does anyone know what this could be? In what cases facebook does that?

Leo,,

log sample:

66.220.158.251, 200.147.35.64 (5715) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:44:40 -0300] "GET /2009/10/catraca-ensina-como-fazer-um-bom-negocio-no-sebo/ HTTP/1.0" 200 23538 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
69.171.229.251, 200.147.96.73 (590684) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:08 -0300] "GET /2012/02/ganhador-da-promocao-comece-2012-discotecando/ HTTP/1.0" 200 22716 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
69.171.242.248, 200.147.35.65 (661588) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:28 -0300] "GET /2012/01/elza-soares-e-trio-no-palco-do-auditorio-ibirapuera/ HTTP/1.0" 200 24699 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"
66.220.149.248, 200.147.35.65 (5367) - - [19/Mar/2012:09:45:43 -0300] "GET /2011/03/projeto-coisa-fina-leva-musica-instrumental-ao-ccsp/ HTTP/1.0" 200 22555 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

Grouch answered 19/3, 2012 at 16:27 Comment(6)

If you follow the URL you provided, they say it's related to users posting links to your articles and Facebook going out to fetch information on them. If I had to bet, I would say someone posted link(s) to your content and Facebook is doing a regularly scheduled check to make sure the information is still there. – Stack 19/3, 2012 at 16:31

I obviously followed the link and, as I said, I know what this is about. My question is why facebook would do dozens of request at the same time periodically. - your guess is valid. but Im not convinced yet – Grouch 19/3, 2012 at 16:43

Expanding on the prior comment, if multiple people posted the link, FAcebook might be lacking in a unified link manager to coordinate those calls so they send one out for every posted link. – Stack 19/3, 2012 at 16:56

1 year later: we have a large site that is getting hit with these, and (it appears) they are all coming in a single flood -- we're getting thousands of requests sent in a few seconds -- no throttling or anything. Facebook, wherefore art thou? – Hourigan 1/3, 2013 at 15:44

I also have problems with this, to pages that are no longer active, which my server returns error 404. But even after 404 error, the facebook stills tries to fetch second by second, dozens of that same url! – Celestial 4/1, 2016 at 15:53

10 years later: Still happening; it's nuts. – Cheiron 9/9, 2021 at 20:22

Facebook Linter will be visiting your pages periodically to update the OpenGraph data, this isn't something you can control, but there is couple of points you should consider:

Have correct and appropriate Cache/ETags for your pages.
Cache the data (at least for anonymous users, which should be the case for Facebook bot).

Assoil answered 19/3, 2012 at 17:16 Comment(2)

I am also getting the same problem there is no open graph functionality on my site now .But it was there earlier . We have removed all the instances for the open graph. Does the share functionality can also cause these error logs ???? – Gossipy 9/7, 2013 at 6:41

@RanbirSingh, sure. It is simply not possible to know your page doesn't have Open Graph meta without visiting and checking, and once URL is shared linter visit it for scrapping and even if you don't have Open Graph tags, some data may be used from your page in shared post – Assoil 9/7, 2013 at 11:8

I have tons of these coming throughout the day for pages that simply do not exist on my sites, especially, for some reason, calendar pages for the year 632, etc. No way someone posted that to Facebook. This is a rogue process.

173.252.83.31   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=11 Year=1605
173.252.107.8   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=3 Year=632
173.252.83.30   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=7 Year=1367
173.252.70.2    facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=12 Year=1446
173.252.107.19  facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=11 Year=1510
69.171.249.13   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=10 Year=1217
69.171.249.12   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=10 Year=65
69.171.230.9    facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=6 Year=427
69.171.249.19   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=3 Year=1628
69.171.249.19   facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=5 Year=617
69.171.249.4    facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)       Month=9 Year=763

Xavier answered 7/6 at 15:12 Comment(1)

Found this: datadome.co/threat-research/… – Xavier 7/6 at 15:26

Yes, we see this as well. It comes in like a DDOS across thousands of different hosted sites. This is new behavior for us, even though we've been hosting these sites for 15 years. I read another post about a security vulnerability in Facebooks developer tools that lets an attacker essentially run a list of urls into facebook, causing a DDOS against their target.

naturally blocking facebook isn't desirable, but since they have not responded to all our attempts to contact them, its our only recourse.

Blandishments answered 9/6 at 18:29 Comment(0)

I have website which is having same problem and it is eating bandwidth, seems to be blocking facebookexternalhit bot is the only option, @mik all of your given IPs were found in our traffic

69.171.249.9 - - [17/Jul/2024:05:18:18 +0100] "GET /post-category/post-category-name/post-name/?filter_color=30,2,27,tp30-1b,tp27-1b,tp132-1b,613,4 HTTP/1.1" 200 105596 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

173.252.83.31 - - [17/Jul/2024:05:18:18 +0100] "GET /post-category/post-category-name/post-name/?filter_color=30,2,27,tp30-1b,tp27-1b,tp132-1b,613,4 HTTP/1.1" 200 105596 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

Eulaliaeulaliah answered 17/7 at 5:8 Comment(0)

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