Screw You IonCrawl, AKA ionos.de, AKA 1and1 2022-11-06

Some people have obscure personal web sites with information that applies to a small minority of humans. Of those people, some of them self host their web sites. Of those people, some of them pay attention to log files. I am one of those assholes. Today I saw this douchebaggery in my logs:

2022-11-06T19:07:01-05:00 198.251.73.99 [dnscrypt.ca:80] "GET /sitemap.xml HTTP/1.1" 301 "-" "IonCrawl (https://www.ionos.de/terms-gtc/faq-crawler-en/)"
2022-11-06T19:07:01-05:00 198.251.73.99 [dnscrypt.ca:443] "GET /sitemap.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 "-" "IonCrawl (https://www.ionos.de/terms-gtc/faq-crawler-en/)"
2022-11-06T19:07:02-05:00 198.251.73.99 [dnscrypt.ca:80] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 "-" "IonCrawl (https://www.ionos.de/terms-gtc/faq-crawler-en/)"
2022-11-06T19:07:03-05:00 198.251.73.99 [dnscrypt.ca:80] "GET /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php HTTP/1.1" 444 "-" "IonCrawl (https://www.ionos.de/terms-gtc/faq-crawler-en/)"

Seriously, a bot that has never crawled my shit before went for the sitemap, confirmed there is a root page, then went right to the Turdpress login page. Clearly this is a <sarcasm>legitimate crawler</sarcasm>. Well, now who is this eh? Looking at the web site in their user-agent, it says:

Does the IONOS Crawler access admin pages?

Given that it automatically follows available links, it may be that the IONOS Crawler also accesses administration pages such as a WordPress admin login page ("wp-admin/admin.php"), unless they are protected from public access. However, the IONOS Crawler does not try to log in, but simply visits the site.

Since I (1) have never heard of ioncrawl before and (2) have not run Turdpress for years and (3) have never run Turdpress on dnscrypt.ca, I suspect that this claim is what we in the computer biz call "bullshit". There are almost no links to dnscrypt.ca anywhere, and there should be zero links to dnscrypt.ca/wp-* in existence. IonCrawl, you ain't on the level. So who are you? Well, a whois lookup shows that it is 1and1... feel free to use your favourite search engine to look for "1and1 sucks" and you'll see how great they are.

Stolen from imgflip.com

Ultimately, nobody cares what I think, nobody cares about a few stupid log entries, and nobody cares that 1and1 is a bag of dicks. I know all that. But somebody had to say it.