FindFiles.net Bot: Robots.txt & Crawl Policy Reference

AI Summary: FindFiles.net operates a suite of web crawlers designed to discover publicly accessible files on the internet. Their bots perform general file discovery, link checking, favicon fetching, virus scanning, and image classification. They document their IP addresses (65.21.31.180) and support reverse DNS verification via bot.findfiles.net. Blocking these bots will prevent your files from appearing in FindFiles.net search results.

Role and policy boundary

According to their official documentation, FindFiles.net operates several purpose-specific User-Agents that share the same verified crawler hostname and IP infrastructure. These include:

• FindFilesBot/1.0: General crawler for public file discovery.
• FindFiles.net-LinkChecker/1.1: Checks whether public file URLs are still reachable.
• FindFiles.net-FaviconFetcher/1.0: Fetches site favicons for search results.
• FindFiles.net-VirusScan/1.0: Downloads executable or risky files for malware scanning.
• FindFiles.net-ImageNSFWClassifier/1.0: Fetches images for adult-content filtering.

Their primary purpose is to build a specialized search engine for files (PDFs, ZIPs, CAD files, etc.). They state that they only check publicly available files and respect server permissions. Do not infer that they collect AI-training data; their stated goal is file search and safety verification.

If your logs confirm an exact FindFiles.net token and you want to prevent your files from being indexed in their search engine, publish:

User-agent: FindFilesBot
Disallow: /

For selective access (e.g., allowing them to index public documents but not internal archives):

User-agent: FindFilesBot
Allow: /public-documents/
Disallow: /private-archives/
Disallow: /internal/

Robots.txt is advisory and cannot protect private or licensed content. Use authentication, authorization, signed URLs, and origin controls for those boundaries.

Layered verification

Start with raw access logs and preserve the complete User-Agent, source IP, ASN, reverse DNS, method, path, status, response size, redirects, timestamp, and request rate. Because FindFiles.net actively looks for files, their traffic might resemble aggressive scraping, making verification essential.

FindFiles.net provides clear verification methods. They publish their IPv4 (65.21.31.180) and IPv6 (2a01:4f9:3080:2b61::2) addresses. You can also perform a reverse DNS (PTR) lookup on the accessing IP address, which should resolve to bot.findfiles.net.

Analyze behavior without assigning purpose prematurely. Requests using HTTP2 HEAD requests to check file availability align with their documented behavior; deep traversal of private areas, high concurrency ignoring their stated 10-second rate limit, or private API access may indicate spoofing. These patterns demonstrate operational impact but cannot prove the operator or downstream use.

Evaluate /robots.txt independently. Confirm the canonical host, response status, content type, exact user-agent group, and path match. A page-level directive may express a discoverability preference:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

These signals do not establish an opt-out for an undocumented client and do not secure private routes. Use authenticated delivery, signed URLs, and application authorization.

WAF and Nginx remediation examples

Once logs confirm an exact unwanted token (e.g., a spoofed bot failing reverse DNS verification, or if you intentionally want to block FindFiles.net globally), a narrow WAF rule can block the declared identity. Replace the example expression if your observed header differs:

{
  "description": "Block observed FindFiles.net token",
  "expression": "lower(http.user_agent) contains \"findfiles\"",
  "action": "block"
}

For Nginx, scope enforcement to private and high-cost routes while investigating public access:

map $http_user_agent $block_findfiles {
    default 0;
    ~*FindFiles 1;
}

server {
    location ~ ^/(private|internal|account|uploads|paywall|api)/ {
        if ($block_findfiles) { return 403; }
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

A User-Agent rule is easy to spoof or evade and may block a legitimate client using the substring. Do not create an IP allowlist or broad network block without current operator evidence. Test browsers, social previews, feed readers, search crawlers, approved monitors, and customer integrations. Pair edge matching with authentication, rate limits, signed assets, and anomaly detection.

Review checklist

Search logs for every exact header that may be associated with FindFiles.net (including their specific LinkChecker or VirusScan variants) and preserve representative requests. Record paths, response sizes, statuses, source networks, timing, and rate. Verify the traffic by checking if the IP matches 65.21.31.180 or if reverse DNS resolves to bot.findfiles.net.

Decide whether your objective is to preserve file search visibility, prevent extraction, protect private content, or reduce crawl load. Publish a targeted robots group only for the exact observed token, enforce sensitive routes with WAF and application controls, and test docs, media, feeds, sitemaps, uploads, and APIs separately.

References

1. FindFiles.net Bot Documentation — official documentation detailing crawler variants, IPs, and reverse DNS verification, accessed 2026-08-24.
2. Google Robots.txt Introduction — general explanation of crawler directives and their limitations.
3. RFC 9309 — Robots Exclusion Protocol standard; it does not authenticate a User-Agent.

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