Not being crawled

If you run a website, calendar, or mailing list archive and do not want Access Events to use it as a source, you can block our crawler or ask us to remove it. We respect either choice.

The quickest way to opt out

Email privacy@accessevents.org with the URL, domain, calendar feed, or archive you want removed. If you manage the source, please say so. We can disable future crawling and remove pending event drafts that came from it. You can also review the sources Access Events currently checks.

If an event is already published on Access Events and should be corrected or removed, include the Access Events link too. Our editors will review that separately from the crawler block.

Block our crawler with robots.txt

Access Events identifies itself as AccessEventsBot/1.0 and checks robots.txt before fetching a page or feed. To block it from your whole site, add this to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: AccessEventsBot
Disallow: /

To block only one part of your site, use the relevant path instead:

User-agent: AccessEventsBot
Disallow: /pipermail/
Disallow: /events/

We cache robots rules for up to 24 hours, so a new rule may not take effect immediately. Email us if you want the source removed sooner.

What Access Events checks

Access Events only checks sources that have been deliberately added to our system, such as public event calendars, public event pages, public calendar feeds, and public mailing list archives. We are not running a broad web search crawler.

We do not try to access private groups, paywalled pages, pages behind a login, or areas blocked by robots.txt. When the crawler finds a possible event, it creates a draft for editor review. Nothing found this way is published automatically.

If your announcements are public but not reusable

Some event announcements are public for a specific audience, but not intended to be copied into other listings. The clearest technical signal is to block the relevant path in robots.txt. A note in a page footer or archive description may not be visible to automated tools, but you can always email us directly.

What we do with crawled information

We use crawled event text only to draft event listings for Access Events editors. We do not use it to build marketing lists, profile attendees, or publish private contact information. If a public event announcement includes contact details, editors should only keep what is useful for someone trying to attend or ask the organizer about the event.