Unique usernames... Who are they?

some unknown visitors logged in Webalizer stats

[Slayton]

Greetings all,

A newbie here with a newbie question:

I'm currently not using HTTP authentication or any similar scripts, yet I get visitors in my Webalizer stats with unique usernames, logging on as 'guest' and other names.

So I'm confused as to who these visitors are, and what might've caused them to log on to my site with a username..?

If anyone could please shed some light on this, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks,

Slayton

[cfx211]

Thats very strange if you have not setup any authentication or authorization. I can tell you from past experience that some of these programs come with user identification setup as a default setting, but in your case everyone should appear as guests.

Can you post some of these entries so we have an idea of what you are seeing?

Also what kind of site are you running?

[ukgimp]

Hello slayton

Welcome to WebmasterWorld

That seems weird. Have you checked a few things, like the IP of the people logging in to see if it is familiar. You will need to do a whois on the IP.

One thing that springs to mind also is ftp access. Does that register in your log files and with webalizer. I simply don’t know that one, but it is feasible.

Hopefully someone else will have a definitive answer.

Cheers

[Slayton]

Thanks for the replies cfx211 & ukgimp.

Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping a close eye on the logs until recently, but ftp access is a possibility though.

My site is a small personal site for art & illustration. No guestbook or form mail used, just HTML and some PHP for the gallery.

The unique username entries are infrequent, there were only 2 in June, and none in previous months. They looked like so:

63.XXX.XXX.XXX - john [20/Jun/2003:09:40:36 -0800] "GET /index.... etc.

As dumb as it sounds, I have no idea what format my log uses, so I'm not sure whether the "john" part means remote user %u, or remote logname %l. But seems the username is only logged with the first request of the visit; all subsequent requests don't have usernames. Their IP is unfamiliar, but no strange codes or anything virus/hack-like in the logs.

Any ideas..?

[TheWebographer]

It could very well be you are using a virtual host and valid adminstrators are logging in.

[Slayton]

TheWebographer, thanks.

You're right I am using a virtual host, so they could be admins from the web hosting company. In which case it's probably not a big concern. If it is them though, I wish they wouldn't log on with nicknames, and it wouldn't seem so odd.

Thanks all for the suggestions.