What GitHub Camo does
GitHub Camo is an open source image proxy that GitHub uses to serve images through anonymized URLs. When images are embedded in GitHub content, Camo serves them through proxy URLs on githubusercontent.com subdomains so that browser details and related information are hidden from other users. Caching depends on the Cache-Control headers your server returns, and hosts can purge a cached image by sending a PURGE request to its Camo URL. Videos are hosted by GitHub directly and are not processed through Camo.
How to control GitHub Camo
Target GitHub Camo in your robots.txt with the github-camo token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow GitHub Camo
User-agent: github-camo
Allow: /Block GitHub Camo
User-agent: github-camo
Disallow: /How to identify GitHub Camo
Temso identifies GitHub Camotraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
github-camoGitHub Camo FAQ
What is GitHub Camo?
GitHub Camo is GitHub's open source image proxy, which fetches externally hosted images embedded in GitHub content and serves them through anonymized githubusercontent.com URLs so that browser details and related information are hidden from other users.
How do I block GitHub Camo?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: github-camo" followed by "Disallow: /", keeping in mind that blocking the proxy can prevent your images from displaying in GitHub content. Because Camo caching depends on HTTP cache headers, already cached copies may continue to be served until they expire or you purge them with a PURGE request to the Camo URL.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
