sna-0.0.1

[wilderness]

66.205.***.3 - - [30/Oct/2004:11:05:45 -0700] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 2773 "-" "sna-0.0.1 ([e-mail])"

Don't know!
Don't care!

[edited by: volatilegx at 12:18 am (utc) on Nov. 26, 2004]
[edit reason] obscured IP [/edit]

[guitaristinus]

Requested 868 pages from my site.

66.205.***.3 - - [04/Nov/2004:01:21:39 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 93 "-" "sna-0.0.1 ([e-mail])"

According to [info.vilesilencer.com...] the "Search Engine/Bot Owner" is Snoopy PHP-client.

According to [sourceforge.net...] "Snoopy is a PHP class that simulates a web browser. It automates the task of retrieving web page content and posting forms.

Also known as Snoopy_v0.xx. WebmasterWorld has this: [webmasterworld.com...]

How should I add "sna-0.0.1 ([e-mail])"
to my robots.txt?
User-agent: sna-0.0.1
or
User-agent: Snoopy
or?

[edited by: volatilegx at 12:18 am (utc) on Nov. 26, 2004]
[edit reason] obscured IP [/edit]

[wilderness]

How should I add "sna-0.0.1 ([e-mail])"
to my robots.txt?

Actually, that option never entered my consideration.
My choice was: SetEnvIf User-Agent ^sna keep_out

I would however presume that either

User-agent: sna-0.0.1
or
User-agent: sna-0

would suffice.

[guitaristinus]

Thanks.

I've decided to add
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sna-0.0.1 [NC,OR]
to my .htaccess file.

[pendanticist]

sna-0.0.1 [webmasterworld.com] visited me in October and reminded me of the first time we had heard of MSN's new Search Engine Spider. You know, having a Hotmail E-mail Address in the UA string was the first item that had folks around the boards going "...Oh Yeah! Sure! That's legit!.

Having said that, I fired off an e-mail this time as well, to see what kind of response I'd get.

Suffice to say, I'm still waiting...

[GaryK]

He's using two different user agents each a variation on the other but they both come from the same IP. At least he seems to read and respect robots.txt but I want to know why he's crawling my site multiple times each week. Alas I've had no response to my e-mail inquiries so I banned his IP Address.

[PHPot]

We've confirmed the observation that robots with the user agent

sna-0.0.1 [e-mail]

are harvesting email addresses. About a week and a half after the visit of the spider, email addresses on the website appear to begin receiving spam messages. Here is an example subject line from the spam this spider results in:

From: "Compound Natural Foods" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Compound Natural Foods

More information on this harvester can be found here:

(link removed)

[edited by: volatilegx at 12:19 am (utc) on Nov. 26, 2004]
[edit reason] removed offsite link [/edit]

[JAB Creations]

As I've made warnings on my own forum I'll repeat it here...

DO NOT EMAIL UA ADDRESSES!

Think about it ... if you only get several hits from these e-mail only UAs and you take in to consideration we know about UA e-mail harvestors and you're not getting a response back, what does it tell you?

The more informed of us use contact forms versus putting our e-mail address on our sites publically.

After discussing this with another person we came to the simple conclusion, these UAs are targeted at getting the emails of smart but still curious webmasters.

So don't email these people, just block their UA.

If a bot is going to crawl any of our sites the UA provider should have a URL pointing to an info page versus their email address. One hundred bucks on the bet that there isn't a human at the other end of that address if you're not getting deamons.

[pendanticist]

Uh, I am not sure just whom you are speaking to, but perhaps it is you who should partake of this bit of background - ( before you time here, I believe ) [webmasterworld.com...]

It is entitled: "Someone at MS Just Got Banned".

A good read (In it's entirety, mind you :o ) for those of you who think those of us who have a history with contacting e-mail addies, particularly regarding MSN or Hotmail, are less informed.

By the way, I have neither received a reply to my query, nor seen any spike of UCE/SPAM with the account used. :)