Unable to access API, possibly blocked?

problem
1

Hi NewsBlur team,

I run Enzo Reader, which integrates with NewsBlur through your API. A customer reported that their NewsBlur feeds work normally in the browser, but no articles synchronize into our system. Our investigation found the same connection failure across multiple NewsBlur user connections in our production environment.

Connection details

  • Source server IP: 172.237.159.95

  • Destination: newsblur.com → 65.108.152.3, TCP port 443

  • API operation failing: POST https://newsblur.com/api/login

  • Verified: September 18, 2026, approximately 15:46 UTC

The application records:

NewsBlur login failed: Net::OpenTimeout:
Failed to open TCP connection to newsblur.com:443 (execution expired)

The connection fails before authentication or an HTTP response.

Could you check whether 172.237.159.95 is blocked or filtered on your side, or whether there is a routing issue affecting this source address? We can run additional diagnostics if helpful.

Could our shared production IP have triggered an automated abuse or login-rate block? All 20 connected accounts use this address. If so, please share the triggering request pattern and recommended limits so we can correct it before access is restored (and if we did do something that got us blocked, we’re very sorry!)

2

Yes, that IP is blocked at our firewall, and has been since July 9th. So this isn’t a routing problem, and it isn’t new. I no longer have the logs from when it was added, so before I lift it I’d like to understand what the integration does so it doesn’t end up blocked again. Can you share which endpoints you call, how often each account syncs, and what the client does when a request fails or times out? Twenty accounts behind one IP is fine, but the combined rate should stay under roughly 100 requests a minute and failures need to back off instead of retrying right away. Once I have that I’ll remove the block.

3

Thanks for the reply! Interesting regarding the timing. Yes, will provide all of that but let me first verify that the total rate limits are being respected first. I’ll be back with that confirmation and all requested details…