NewsFlash feed issues

Resolved

• 03/31/2025 2:39 PM:

  User reported being blocked due to the application's update interval setting.

• 04/07/2025 7:34 AM:

  Confirmed the application is being blocked from accessing feed content due to the following issues:

  1. Failing to space out when making bulk requests (e.g. when users open the application after some time).
  2. When adding a new RSS feed subscription, the app makes 2-3 repeated requests to the same feed URL unnecessarily. Tested this on NewsFlash latest Linux version 3.3.5 using its Local RSS feature. This can be resolved by limiting the subscription to just one request and waiting for the max-age to expire by default before making subsequent requests to the same feed.
  3. Having no in-app confirmation dialog to notify users about potentially being blocked when attempting to manually override the frequency at which the app will request new feed content
  4. Not using a proper Accept header in its requests
  5. Failing to declare an identifiable and unique User Agent
• 04/08/2025 8:19 AM:

  User opened issue at news-flash/news_flash_gtk#772.

• 06/05/2025 6:06 PM:

  Developer confirmed to have addressed issues related to caching, Accept, and User Agent, and spacing out its requests in version 4. It's also implemented a warning, so users are aware that changing the polling configuration setting can cause the application to be blocked. We'll continue evaluating the application's behavior to confirm the resolutions and will resolve this issue when completed.

• 11/26/2025 9:10 AM:

  This issue has been resolved and is now being mitigated by restricting the application's requests through our abuse protection. Because NewsFlash is not a verified reader, it will continue to be automatically restricted when excessive requests are made—even if those requests are made across multiple IP addresses and regardless of their User Agent.

  If you are a NewsFlash user and donating at least $25 or more per month to help with server costs, please contact us for a special token that can be added to the application that will remove these restrictions.