InformetaReader: our automated reader

This is an automated program, not a person. It reads public investor pages of listed companies. A person is responsible for it, and you can reach him.

Who runs it

InformetaReader is operated by John Benjamin, Informeta Technologies Inc.
Contact: john.benjamin@informeta.com

What it reads

Only public investor pages of listed companies. For each company it reads:

• the site's robots.txt file;
• the results page;
• the events page;
• the press release list;
• the documents those pages link to (for example results releases and reports).

It does not log in. It does not fill in forms. It does not read anything that needs an account.

How often

• About ten requests per company per week.
• Never more than one request every ten seconds to a site.
• The first read of a company may take up to thirty requests. That happens once.
• It never sends several requests at once to the same site.
• If a site says it is busy, or asks it to slow down, it slows down. It does not retry in a loop.

It obeys robots.txt

It reads robots.txt before anything else and follows it. Its name in robots.txt is InformetaReader.

How it identifies itself

Every request says who it is, in this exact form:

InformetaReader/1.0 (automated reader of public investor pages; operated by John Benjamin, Informeta Technologies Inc; contact john.benjamin@informeta.com)

Every request is also signed, using HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421) as used by Web Bot Auth. A site can check the signature to be sure the request really comes from us. Our public keys are here:

https://SITE_ADDRESS/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory

Our requests come from this internet address: SENDING_ADDRESS.

How to slow it or stop it

• To stop it: add these two lines to your robots.txt:

  User-agent: InformetaReader
  Disallow: /

• To slow it, stop it, or ask anything else: send one e-mail to john.benjamin@informeta.com with your site's address. A person reads it and we act on it.

Contact

John Benjamin, Informeta Technologies Inc: john.benjamin@informeta.com