"Anonymous" hits from Alexa IP range?

Fetches robots.txt, but no UA

[zCat]

I've been seeing the odd set of activity like this:

209.237.238.#*$! - - [23/Apr/2006:11:04:59 +0200] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 378 "-" ""
209.237.238.#*$! - - [23/Apr/2006:11:05:29 +0200] "GET /index.html HTTP/1.0" 200 5821 "-" ""
209.237.238.xxx - - [23/Apr/2006:11:07:33 +0200] "GET /some-other-page.html HTTP/1.0" 200 12193 "-" ""

The IP range is reported as belonging to Alexa, but there's no UA. So even if whatever-it-is is fetching robots.txt, I've no idea whether it follows it or what I can put in to stop it.

Anyone know what Alexa is up to?

Whatever, I've blocked the IP range with HTTP status "402" (Payment required) ;-).

[Pfui]

Beats heck outta me what they're doing, or why.

I've been talking (and complaining, and ranting:) about Alexa for a while now. Here are my most recent observations:

Amazon-owned Alexa breaks rules. Again.
Now hitting bare and badly.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[zCat]

Yeah, they got my back up with their hopelessly incompetent attempt to link sites via the WHOIS info.

I've been spending some quality time with my logs recently. Ugh. At this rate I'll have an anti-bot/scraper system to rival IncrediBILL's...

[Pfui]

LOL. You and me both! I love his take [webmasterworld.com] on the takers.

Oh, and if/when you figure out a way to make HTTP status "402" (Payment required) workable, say as a Pay-Per-Page-View $cheme tied to PayPal or somesuch, quick, hit me up for venture capital:)

[zCat]

LOL. You and me both! I love his take on the takers.

I stumbled across his blog recently. Fascinating stuff. And I though I had problems...

Oh, and if/when you figure out a way to make HTTP status "402" (Payment required) workable, say as a Pay-Per-Page-View $cheme tied to PayPal or somesuch, quick, hit me up for venture capital:)

I'm thinking of some kind of Pay-per-Scrape system, possibly involving Google's rumored pay system and some very discerning pigeons.