ipapi.gr

Bot signals — Internet scanner

Internet Census Group scanner IP addresses

Internet Census Group is an internet scanning project in the IPAPI.GR scanner catalogue. Addresses it publishes or verifiably identifies as its own set risk.is_scanner.

risk.is_scanner FeedRangesrDNS Reviewed
Official documentation (opens in a new tab) All internet scanners

Check an IP

Is this IP really Internet Census Group?

Checks the address against what Internet Census Group publishes, the same evidence behind risk.is_scanner.

01 — Verification

How IPAPI.GR verifies Internet Census Group.

Only from what Internet Census Group publishes about itself. No third-party blocklists, no behavioural guesses. Live address counts change with every publication, so check the official file for the current list.

Internet Census Group

risk.is_scanner
Method
Feed Operator IP feed
Method
Ranges Published IP ranges
Method
rDNS Forward-confirmed reverse DNS
Official file
Format
Operator IP feed
Reverse DNS
PTR hostname must end in .internet-census.org. The hostname must then resolve forward to the same address.
Networks
Ranges the project publishes or has registered for scanning, reviewed into the scanner catalogue.
Refresh
Every hour. If a refresh fails, entries expire after 24 hours instead of being trusted forever.

02 — In the response

What a match looks like.

A lookup of a Internet Census Group address sets risk.is_scanner. The flags come with geolocation and network data in the same response, for Pro API keys.

The response says which kind of bot an address belongs to, not which operator. Pair it with the user agent: a request that claims to be Internet Census Group but doesn't match is unverified.

GET /api/lookup/{ip}?key=PRO_KEY
{
  // … location and network fields …
  "risk": {
    "is_ai": false,
    "is_crawler": false,
    "is_scanner": true
  }
}

03 — Questions

About Internet Census Group.

Does Internet Census Group publish its scanner IP addresses?

Yes. Internet Census Group publishes a list at https://rest.db.ripe.net/search.json?query-string=MNT-BST&inverse-attribute=mnt-by&type-filter=inetnum&flags=no-referenced&flags=no-irt&flags=no-filtering, which IPAPI.GR imports directly.

How do I verify Internet Census Group with reverse DNS?

Look up the PTR record for the IP address. The hostname must end in .internet-census.org, and a forward lookup of that hostname must return the same IP address. A PTR record alone can be set by anyone who controls the address, so the forward confirmation is the part that matters.

How often is the Internet Census Group list refreshed?

IPAPI.GR re-fetches it every hour. If a refresh fails, the previous entries expire after at most 24 hours instead of being trusted forever.

Which risk flag does Internet Census Group set?

A matching address sets risk.is_scanner in the lookup response. The risk flags are returned for Pro API keys.

From the blog

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