Java/1.4.2_01 user agent

What is it?

[KeithBoynton]

Is the user agent "Java/1.4.2_xx" a user agent supplied by valid browsers or is it as I suspect only supplied by a Java library used by programmers that write custom spiders etc.?

Has anyone had any experience of it?

[bull]

Is the user agent "Java/1.4.2_xx" a user agent supplied by valid browsers

No.

or is it as I suspect only supplied by a Java library used by programmers that write custom spiders etc.?

Yes. Cf. [webmasterworld.com...]

[KeithBoynton]

Thought so, I had one the other day that fell into bot trap, and keep getting the occasional request from other ips.

I've decided to ban it on UA as I can't think of anything useful that would use that UA. If someone was doing something useful using it they should at least append some other identification to it.

[wilderness]

decided to ban it on UA

Over time you'll see a variety of versions of this UA.

Using and begins with first four letters tends to catch all. Or even a contains first four letters will do the same.

[KeithBoynton]

Thanks for that