element-hq / element-hq/synapse

Link preview should respect robots.txt

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#3,242 2 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
A-URL-Preview O-Occasional S-Minor T-Defect
Dominant language
Python
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Description

This issue has been migrated from [#3242](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/3242).

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### Description

When we send a link in Matrix, the client can use the Synapse's integrated prefetcher to fetch the link preview. It though doesn't check if the website allows bots there and crawls the page regardlessly.

We need to have a User-agent for Synapse and to parse robots.txt at the root of the domain user wanted to preview, if access for Synapse is denied, do not visit the URL.

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