Surf

[zomega42]

The user-agent SURF has been doing all sorts of funny non-human things on my site. It comes from lots of different people. And, it accesses content in my members-only section, masquerading around with the session IDs of some of my real members.

I take it this means it is running on my members' computers, as if its a web accelerator or something similar. But I emailed a couple of the members and they swear they don't have any such thing installed. Does anyone know what this is? spyware, virus, ...?

[wilderness]

It's a content filtering software.
I get them from a variety of IP's.
http ://www.surfcontrol.com/

Their easy to deny with a SetEnvIf. The software just comes back immediately without the UA included and instead used a standard UA.

It's likely harmless as most content filers are by design and intended to be useful.

I haven't "by personal choice" allowed the used of content filters on my sites. It may be a mistake however, I've taken great care to exclude use of content related accepted indsutry terms in nearly all my pages to avoid and assocition or search returns the might be assocaited with vulgarity.

As far as employers using content filtering? It's of my own opinion that if an employer requires such restrictions of use for an emlpoyee than the employee has no business at my sites anyway.

Don