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HeistNotesBot

Our feed reader identifies itself as:

HeistNotesBot/1.0 (+https://heistnotes.com/bot)

What it does

  • Reads public RSS and Atom feeds only, at most every 5 to 30 minutes per feed. Official YouTube channels are read through YouTube's own Data API, because youtube.com's robots.txt doesn't allow bots on its feeds.
  • Uses conditional requests (ETag / If-Modified-Since), so an unchanged feed costs you a 304.
  • Respects robots.txt for the HeistNotesBot user agent and for *.
  • Stores only the headline, link, publish time and categories from feeds.
  • For stories our news desk covers, it reads the article page once (robots.txt permitting) so our writer can check facts. The text isn't stored or republished. We download the page's lead image (its og:image) to show with our story, credited to your site. To have an image removed, email bot@heistnotes.com.
  • Every story we cover names and links your article as a source.

Opt out

Email bot@heistnotes.com from your domain, or disallow HeistNotesBot in robots.txt. We honour opt-out requests within 24 hours and remove existing items on request.