Conspiracy theory #13 :(

ACABF0DE.ipt.aol.com partners with Altavista?

[han solo]

I submitted this site about 3 weeks ago. Scooter came around like the wonderful little spider that we all know it is, and then about a week later, I get this in my logs.

Does anybody think it is related? The site I don't believe had yet made it into the database, but how could aol know it was there? Unless they were looking at domain name registration stuff, but I kind of doubt that.

About a week later, I got evidence I was in the db, but no reason why this thing came 'round. Any thoughts are appreciated, including wild and crazy theories. I'm ready to believe. :)

Cheers,
Han Solo

[littleman]

ACABF0DE.ipt.aol.com -> 172.171.240.222

Look at some similar hosts I dug up:
98a866b7.ipt.aol.com
98a866cc.ipt.aol.com
98a905a6.ipt.aol.com
98a9daa6.ipt.aol.com
98abeb83.ipt.aol.com
98acba0a.ipt.aol.com
98ad7552.ipt.aol.com
98ad7ef3.ipt.aol.com
98ae0158.ipt.aol.com
98ae8f32.ipt.aol.com
98aea214.ipt.aol.com
98aea4ab.ipt.aol.com
98afdb22.ipt.aol.com
ac8605f2.ipt.aol.com
ac86b9b6.ipt.aol.com
ac89521b.ipt.aol.com
ac8ad462.ipt.aol.com
ac8bab4d.ipt.aol.com
ac8f3375.ipt.aol.com
ac8fe98e.ipt.aol.com
ac992036.ipt.aol.com
aca00574.ipt.aol.com
aca4774f.ipt.aol.com
aca54d76.ipt.aol.com
aca6f85b.ipt.aol.com

I have a feeling this is an individual looking at your domain. What was the UA? Did it have a referrer? Is the domain in a competitive
area or does it have a good name? It could ba as simple as a netcraft [netcraft.com] lookup.

[NFFC]

>I'm ready to believe

AOL members on IRC.

[han solo]

Hmmm, netcraft? That was one thought I had already, but at this point, I sort of wanted a more outlandish explanation.

>Aol members on IRC?

Could you please explain? IRC is the internet relay chat, correct? Don't use it, have heard of it, though. Do you mean that somebody accessed it through a chat link?

Thanks for all the help, though. I'm thinking I'll stop panicking, and relax now. Although I don't really think it was a visitor, maybe the netcraft thing. I still don't understand why they have put together that domain name thing...

Cheers,
Han Solo

[msgraph]

Since we're on the topic of AOL. I noticed a lot of hits on my site with this type of user agent with no referring information at all.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; AOL 5.0; Windows 95)

They were all users coming off of an AOL proxy. I did some cross-checking and could not find the pages receiving the most hits listed anywhere on search.aol.com.

I did find, however, that there was one user with referring information who came from search.netscapeonline.co.uk. Only then did I think to have a look in the AOL UK. At the time, Netscapeonline.co.uk had exactly the same results as search.aol.co.uk. I found the pages that were receiving all these hits listed all over AOL UK's results.

My conclusion was that AOL users using search.aol.co.uk will never send referring information. Does anyone know if it is the same for AOL US as well?

I have heard that AOL's proxy servers will not allow it's users to send any referring information. I think MSN users follow the same pattern as I also receive many hits with no referring information from users with MSN installed in their browsers.

Probably many of you know about this but for those who receive a lot of hits with these types of UA's I think this bit can help you narrow down everything.