Mozilla/4.* (Compatible

to block or not?

[Seedy]

I've noticed MSN sometimes uses Mozilla/4.* plus one or two ISP bots like StalkStalk and a couple of educational institutions.

Other than that the rest of its' users seem to be bad news.

Does anyone know of any other reasons not to block 'Mozilla/4.* (Compatible' please, perhaps to add as exclusions?

Thank you

[dstiles]

I assume you mean "block from MS IPs", since Mozilla/4 is still a major browser UA-part.

There is quite a bit of coverage on MS and various UAs in the Search Engine Spiders forum at [webmasterworld.com...]

[Seedy]

Well to be honest, no. I was considering creating a blanket block for my Mozilla/4. users with exception rules to allow those I know are genuine because from what I can see, the very large majority of visitors to my sites using it are unwelcome.

[dstiles]

Most browsers IE, FF, chrome, Safari etc) begin their UAs with either Mozilla/4 or Mozilla/5 depending on browsaer age and a few other things. It's a stupid historical thing brought about by MS wanting to crash the web scene.

If you block most Mozilla/4 or 5 UAs you will lose a lot of real people.

I really recommend reading though the past year's Search Engine Spiders forum.

[Seedy]

I wouldn't even consider blocking /5 but I just can't help but notice the very high proportion of /4 users that aren't legitimate visitors.

I will do as you suggest though and read up more.
Many thanks

[g1smd]

I'm almost at the point of blocking all "Mozilla/4.0" instances, especially when combined with "MSIE 6.0".

[Seedy]

I'm with you there, and Mozilla/4.0 coupled with all MSIE versions prior to 6.0 too (with an exception for SE's)

Perhaps something like:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Mozilla/4 [NC] #AND
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MSIE/\ (1-6) [NC] #BUT NOT
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !(google|msn|bing) [NC]
RewriteRule 403.php [F]

?

[g1smd]

Yes. I meant to say "MSIE 6.0 and before".

I see a lot of scraper bots, form filling spammer bots and little or no evidence of real human accesses.

If you mean versions 1 to 6 then

(1-6)

should be

[1-6]

here.

MSIE/\ 

should be

MSIE\ 

too. The slash should not be escaped.

Finally,

RewriteRule 403.php [F]

should be

RewriteRule !^403\.php - [F]

or similar.

[dstiles]

Blocking MSIE6 is ALMOST acceptable.

The browser has been deprecated for a few years now and most accesses with it are bot/exploit attempts; although a few genuines still come through from people running Windows 2000, which cannot run any MS browser higher than that. In fact 2000 is also obsolete: I still use it here for a variety of reasons with Firefox but normally use linux.

[g1smd]

Opera sometimes?/often? spoofs as MSIE 6.00. That's my major concern - and their list of UA strings used over the years is massive and unwieldy.

[dougwilson]

I block msie 2-6. No loss in people visitors seen. Tons of critters turned away.

Wouldn't consider blocking mozilla 4

[Seedy]

If you mean versions 1 to 6 then (1-6) should be [1-6] here.

MSIE/\ should be MSIE\ too. The slash should not be escaped.

Finally, RewriteRule 403.php [F]
should be
RewriteRule !^403\.php - [F]
or similar.

Thank you for cleaning that up, I was being hasty.

[dstiles]

A few "mobile" devices (mostly, I think, old phones) use Moz 1.2. Whether worth enabling is another matter.