My App unintentionally DoSed api, and my IP got blocked across all the sites, now what should I do?

Question

I put a program in cron to run every 5 minutes, and that program loop 5 times and read each api site 12 seconds interval.

But last night (12 hours ago), I noticed that my program broke and there was multiple instances of program running and trying to fetch data in almost every second.

Problem was I didn't set cron to run only one instance of my program, and it taking time more than 5 minutes and duplicating with next cron instances. It was about 2 Hours long!

So, Can I request to unblock my IP here or Should I just wait for automatic release or Just give up?

_{Note: I only have one hosting, I can't change IP address on my side.}

Edit: Looks like it is not temporary, I still can't fetch any data from (api.)?stackoverflow.com, sstatic.net yet until now.

Answer 1

If it were me, I'd email [email protected]. They would be the best people to talk to to get this issue resolved.

Answer 2

This is an old question, but I ran into a similar problem while developing my first app utilizing Stack Exchange API v2.2 this week. A bit of defensive programming can reduce the impact of unintentional foot-shots. Your app (or multiple copies / threads of your app) won't be getting much done, but you are less likely to get barred.

To avoid having your app permanently blocked, you should be looking for backoff in the Common Wrapper Object of every response. When told to back off, do so. The following Javascript excerpt does just that:

function queryStackExchange( queryString ) {      
  // If we have been asked to back off by Stack Exchange API, exit
  var backoffUntil = properties.getProperty("backoff");
  if (backoffUntil) {
    if (now() < backoffUntil) {
      return {"backoff":backoffUntil};
    }
    else {
      // backoff completed; delete snooze setting
      properties.deleteProperty("backoff");
    }
  }

  // OK to proceed - build our query
  ...
  var json = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);

  var obj = JSON.parse(json);

  // Check for backoff request, and set our snooze period
  if ("backoff" in obj) {
    backoffUntil = now() + 1000*parseInt(obj["backoff"]);
    properties.setProperty("backoff", backoffUntil);
  }

  return obj;
}

Answer 3

E-mail us (use the contact link) with the IP and your case details.

Answer 4

Wait unit 00:00 GMT and your rate-limit will be reset.

unless you tripped some wire I am not aware of and got on a black list.