"PHP/5.2.10" as User Agent string

Can I safely block this?

[Sapo]

First, my thanks to the many kind people here for teaching me how to manage user agent strings in .htaccess files!

I saw this one for the first time today:

216.#*$!.#*$!.3 - - [18/May/2010:15:23:17 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 292 "-" "PHP/5.2.10"
216.#*$!.#*$!.3 - - [18/May/2010:15:23:18 -0500] "GET /Forum/ HTTP/1.1" 200 33741 "-" "PHP/5.2.10"

The IP resolves to [a company] in Toronto, but whoever they are, it makes me a bit nervous...

Is there any valid reason for anyone to use this as a UA string? Will I cause havoc with someone's RSS fetcher or something?

[edited by: Receptional at 1:46 pm (utc) on May 19, 2010]
[edit reason] took out identifying specifics [/edit]

[Sapo]

Bump

[caribguy]

Hi Sapo, and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Please don't bump.

I personally do not block anything in that A class that comes from Canada, and I'm quick to the draw. Can't remember seeing that UA on my sites.

It's really your personal call if you want to block by UA. You should make your own decision on whether it's worth to potentially lose some traffic that may otherwise be valuable. One of the factors you may want to consider is how often that particular UA or ip block appears in your logs, and what their behavior is like (frequency of access, file patterns, etc).

Edit: I just noticed that a Dutch hosting provider is on my block list, their upstream is in CA

[Sapo]

Thank you, I'll learn the rules.

I've learned that some sites use a script to check page load times and what-have-you, and this may have been one of them.

I am also quick to block. ;)

[penders]

Will I cause havoc with someone's RSS fetcher or something?

That would be my guess... reading/scraping your page content?

Or may be they have their own SE bot?