Cyveillance

[WebJoe]

Does anyone have an idea about this UA:

2003-01-08 07:44:44 63.148.99.232 - 212.40.20.179 80 GET /email/hoengg.asp - 302 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0);Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+5.05;+Windows+NT+5.0);Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+5.05;+Windows+NT+4.0);Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+5.05;+Windows+NT+3.51) -

I think the IP is Cyveillance, which offers the service to find illegal copies of images and text files that have been stolen from a website.

I noticed that their bot ignores the robots.txt and consequently banned them (therefore the 302 - document found elsewhere...my ban redirects and notifies me by email).

But until a couple of weeks ago Cyveillances bot showed a different IP (63.100.163.x) and UA.

But this UA is, imho, just plain stupid...for a company that wants to provide a reasonable service (if it really is Cyveillance).

EDIT: Sorry, I only found out later that there are other threads with this topic covered (mystery [webmasterworld.com], Cyveillance notorious bandwidth wasters [webmasterworld.com] and MSIE 5.01 requesting robots.txt? [webmasterworld.com])

[carfac]

Hi:

Cybervallence (and their kind) are much more than stupid bandwidth wasters... and the people that run them are more stupid than the 'bots!

If I can go off topic a BIT here, I would like to vent for a minute. Perhaps give you one good reason why we who actively ban do ban this sort of bot.

Either this bot or one like it was hired by a company with a prominent name, Big Blue Widgets. Well, it happened to find the words "Big" "Blue" AND "Widgets" on my site... though not in that order, not in reference to the big company. In fact, the big company and my site are so unrelated it is silly... (my site is an information only site, too.... not even commercial!)

Anyway, I got a C&D letter from the lawyers that represent Big Blue Widgets, demanding I remove those words. Blah blah blah.... I do not want to bore you with all the details. Suffice to say I ended up having to pay 75.00 to MY lawyer to sent them a reply and tell them they were way off base, and someone with a brain was definitely needed at their firm.

OK, maybe I could have written a letter myself, but I felt better knowing it was from a good firm, and was all legal and tidy. Bottom line, they backed down.

So, it is NOT just your bandfwidth they waste. It could also be your time, some stress, possibly some money, and it could possibly be worse than I encountered.

So ban all those little spies!

dave

[WebJoe]

carfac: Thank you for your insights. I already banned their IP-adress ranges but noticed their "adjustment" ins UA identifier ( I get a notification every time a banned bot visits).