Stopping specific bots from using your monthly ShipperHQ quota

Also prevent specific bots from accessing your website (nginx)

The Problem

A co-worker of mine recently brought up an issue to me where one of our clients were exceeding their monthly ShipperHQ api quota. The wordpress site in question was exceeding their 10k api limit from ShipperHQ for 2 months in a row. The combined traffic and sales from the site did not justify hitting 10k api calls monthly. This is where I came in to see if there was a deeper issue.

My first steps were to identify when the api call was sent to ShipperHQ on the site. After some navigating though some pages and keeping an eye on the network tab. I determined the call was being sent out when visiting the checkout.

With that known it was time to see where the hits were coming from.

1. My first though was to check if the shopping checkout was indexed somewhere on google. A quick google dork later site:site-url inurl:checkout I had found that there were a few entries for the shopping checkout url on google. We removed them and edited the robots.txt

2. Ensured ShipperHQ was not on the cart page.

3. lastly, after analyzing the logs I had found a large number of bots that did not respect the robots.txt. Becuase of this they were adding items to carts and navigating to the checkout as they crawled the site. This is where I believed the majortity of the ShipperHQ api hits were coming from. Now its time to block these bots entirly from the site.

Nginx Config

To block these malicious bots from crawling the site you can do the following in your nginx conf. While this isnt perfect, as the person with the crawler can change the user_agent. It will atleast get the majortity of them

If you need to find the user_agent just go to your nginx access.log and it will show it there. Copy and past it to this list (+restart nginx) and it will start blocking.

Specifically for nginx we send back http code 444 for any matching user agents. Code 444 is

CONNECTION CLOSED WITHOUT RESPONSE

  if ($http_user_agent ~* (360Spider|80legs.com|Abonti|AcoonBot|Acunetix|adbeat_bot|AddThis.com|adidxbot|ADmantX|AhrefsBot|AngloINFO|Antelope|BaiduSpider|BeetleBot|billigerbot|binlar|bitlybot|BlackWidow|BLP_bbot|BoardReader|Bolt\ 0|BOT\ for\ JCE|Bot\ mailto\:craftbot@yahoo\.com|casper|CazoodleBot|CCBot|checkprivacy|ChinaClaw|chromeframe|Clerkbot|Cliqzbot|clshttp|CommonCrawler|comodo|CPython|crawler4j|Crawlera|CRAZYWEBCRAWLER|Curious|Custo|CWS_proxy|Default\ Browser\ 0|diavol|DigExt|Digincore|DIIbot|discobot|DISCo|DoCoMo|DotBot|Download\ Demon|DTS.Agent|EasouSpider|eCatch|ecxi|EirGrabber|Elmer|EmailCollector|EmailSiphon|EmailWolf|Exabot|ExaleadCloudView|ExpertSearchSpider|ExpertSearch|Express\ WebPictures|ExtractorPro|extract|EyeNetIE|Ezooms|F2S|FastSeek|feedfinder|FeedlyBot|FHscan|finbot|Flamingo_SearchEngine|FlappyBot|FlashGet|flicky|Flipboard|g00g1e|Genieo|genieo|GetRight|GetWeb\!|GigablastOpenSource|GozaikBot|Go\!Zilla|Go\-Ahead\-Got\-It|GrabNet|grab|Grafula|GrapeshotCrawler|GTB5|GT\:\:WWW|harvest|heritrix|HMView|HomePageBot|HTTP\:\:Lite|HTTrack|HubSpot|ia_archiver|icarus6|IDBot|id\-search|IlseBot|Image\ Stripper|Image\ Sucker|Indigonet|Indy\ Library|integromedb|InterGET|InternetSeer\.com|Internet\ Ninja|IRLbot|ISC\ Systems\ iRc\ Search\ 2\.1|jakarta|Java|JetCar|JobdiggerSpider|JOC\ Web\ Spider|Jooblebot|kanagawa|KINGSpider|kmccrew|larbin|LeechFTP|libwww|Lingewoud|LinkChecker|linkdexbot|LinksCrawler|LinksManager\.com_bot|linkwalker|LinqiaRSSBot|LivelapBot|ltx71|LubbersBot|lwp\-trivial|Mail.RU_Bot|masscan|Mass\ Downloader|maverick|Maxthon$|Mediatoolkitbot|MegaIndex|MegaIndex|megaindex|MFC_Tear_Sample|Microsoft\ URL\ Control|microsoft\.url|MIDown\ tool|miner|Missigua\ Locator|Mister\ PiX|mj12bot|Mozilla.*Indy|Mozilla.*NEWT|MSFrontPage|msnbot|Navroad|NearSite|NetAnts|netEstate|NetSpider|NetZIP|Net\ Vampire|NextGenSearchBot|nutch|Octopus|Offline\ Explorer|Offline\ Navigator|OpenindexSpider|OpenWebSpider|OrangeBot|Owlin|PageGrabber|PagesInventory|panopta|panscient\.com|Papa\ Foto|pavuk|pcBrowser|PECL\:\:HTTP|PeoplePal|Photon|PHPCrawl|planetwork|PleaseCrawl|PNAMAIN.EXE|PodcastPartyBot|prijsbest|proximic|psbot|purebot|pycurl|QuerySeekerSpider|R6_CommentReader|R6_FeedFetcher|RealDownload|ReGet|Riddler|Rippers\ 0|rogerbot|RSSingBot|rv\:1.9.1|RyzeCrawler|SafeSearch|SBIder|Scrapy|Scrapy|SeaMonkey$|search.goo.ne.jp|SearchmetricsBot|search_robot|SemrushBot|Semrush|SentiBot|SEOkicks|SeznamBot|ShowyouBot|SightupBot|SISTRIX|sitecheck\.internetseer\.com|siteexplorer.info|SiteSnagger|skygrid|Slackbot|Slurp|SmartDownload|Snoopy|Sogou|Sosospider|spaumbot|Steeler|sucker|SuperBot|Superfeedr|SuperHTTP|SurdotlyBot|Surfbot|tAkeOut|Teleport\ Pro|TinEye-bot|TinEye|Toata\ dragostea\ mea\ pentru\ diavola|Toplistbot|trendictionbot|TurnitinBot|turnit|URI\:\:Fetch|urllib|Vagabondo|Vagabondo|vikspider|VoidEYE|VoilaBot|WBSearchBot|webalta|WebAuto|WebBandit|WebCollage|WebCopier|WebFetch|WebGo\ IS|WebLeacher|WebReaper|WebSauger|Website\ eXtractor|Website\ Quester|WebStripper|WebWhacker|WebZIP|Web\ Image\ Collector|Web\ Sucker|Wells\ Search\ II|WEP\ Search|WeSEE|Wget|Widow|WinInet|woobot|woopingbot|worldwebheritage.org|Wotbox|WPScan|WWWOFFLE|WWW\-Mechanize|Xaldon\ WebSpider|XoviBot|yacybot|YandexBot|Yandex|YisouSpider|zermelo|Zeus|zh-CN|ZmEu|ZumBot|ZyBorg) ) {
    return 444;
  }

Wordpress modification

If your are unable to modify your nginx conf. Another option would be to have shipping calculation on a different page.

Or, using jQuery, to only load the ShipperHQ calculations after the shipping address is filled out.