Strange blocking behavior w/r/t msn.com

  • Hi! I have the latest versions of WordPress and wordFence. This morning I noticed something very odd. Traffic from this host:

    msnbot-157-55-39-241.search.msn.com was being blocked for this reason:

    Redmond, United States was blocked for Accessed a banned URL.

    However, hits from this host:

    msnbot-40-77-167-41.search.msn.com (Boydton, United States) were not blocked.

    Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas why this might happen?

    Thanks,
    Steve

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter kaspar

    (@kaspar)

    Also, none of the pages that were blocked for MSN were inaccessible to human visitors.

    Steve

    I’m getting this too:
    User hostname: msnbot-207-46-13-162.search.msn.com
    User location: Redmond, United States

    User hostname: msnbot-40-77-167-92.search.msn.com
    User location: Boydton, United States

    Should I whitelist these in the firewall?

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by digbymaass.

    I’m just a user (free version) but I get hit with msn.bots all day long.
    It could be someone using a Microsoft server, or a Microsoft signature.

    I look at the page they are trying to access, and the host details.
    If they are hitting “none-existent” pages I discourage that by blocking them.
    I find they have old data, old URL’s that don’t exist I block them.
    But I don’t need USA traffic anyways, depends on your needs.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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