Published on 2025-08-07T06:18:08Z

Tiny Tiny RSS bot

The Tiny Tiny RSS bot is not a central crawler but a content fetcher from the open-source, self-hosted RSS feed aggregator Tiny Tiny RSS. Its presence in your logs means that an individual user has subscribed to your website's feed using their own private instance of the software. This activity helps distribute your content to a dedicated, privacy-conscious readership that has chosen to follow your updates.

What is the Tiny Tiny RSS bot?

The Tiny Tiny RSS bot is the user-agent for the open-source, self-hosted news feed aggregator Tiny Tiny RSS (TT-RSS). The software acts as a feed crawler, fetching content updates from RSS/Atom feeds that a user has subscribed to. Because the software is self-hosted, each instance is a unique point of contact, making requests directly from the server where it is installed. The bot typically identifies itself with a user-agent string like Tiny Tiny RSS/ [version] (https://tt-rss.org/).

Why is the Tiny Tiny RSS bot crawling my site?

The Tiny Tiny RSS bot is visiting your site because someone running a TT-RSS instance has subscribed to one of your public RSS/Atom feeds. The bot is checking for new content to deliver to that subscriber. By default, it checks for updates every 30 minutes, but this can be customized by the user. This is an authorized and expected activity for any website that publishes content feeds.

What is the purpose of the Tiny Tiny RSS bot?

The purpose of the Tiny Tiny RSS bot is to support the TT-RSS application, which provides users with a self-hosted alternative to commercial RSS readers. It allows individuals to aggregate content from multiple websites in one place. For publishers, having your content read through TT-RSS means your audience can stay updated with your latest posts. Because the software is self-hosted, it offers enhanced privacy for users, as their reading habits are not tracked by a third-party service.

How do I block the Tiny Tiny RSS bot?

To prevent instances of Tiny Tiny RSS from fetching your content feeds, you can add a disallow rule to your robots.txt file. Note that this will stop users of the software from receiving your updates.

To block this bot, add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Tiny Tiny RSS
Disallow: /

How to verify the authenticity of the user-agent operated by ?

Reverse IP lookup technique

To verify user-agent authenticity, you can use host linux command two times with the IP address of the requester.

```
> host IPAddressOfRequest
```
This command returns the reverse lookup hostname (e.g., 4.4.8.8.in-addr.arpa.).

> host ReverseDNSFromTheOutputOfFirstRequest

If the output matches the original IP address and the domain is associated with a trusted operator (e.g., ), the user-agent can be considered legitimate.

IP list lookup technique

Some operators provide a public list of IP addresses used by their crawlers. This list can be cross-referenced to verify a user-agent's authenticity. However, both operators and website owners may find it challenging to maintain an up-to-date list, so use this method with caution and in conjunction with other verification techniques.