HelpSupportServices

Lots of references to this UA but nothing definitive

[GaryK]

HelpSupportServices is the UA that showed up in my logs last week.

It was using an AOL IP Address of 172.171.***.*.

It did not read robots.txt and its behavior leads me to believe it's human-operated, not automatic.

It landed on one of my pages via a link from PHP using an IE6 UA. Then it immediately tried accessing the page using HelpSupportServices UA before reverting back to the original UA. All of this took place in less than five seconds.

A Google/Yahoo/MSN search shows this UA in lots of log files. I could not find anything definitive about the UA like I usually can here on WW.

Does anyone have any idea what this bot is?

Thanks. :)

[edited by: volatilegx at 1:23 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
[edit reason] obscured IP address [/edit]

[GaryK]

I apologize for not obscuring the IP Address. The charter clearly states (Spiders, Spider IP's, and other spider topics...) it's alright to post IP Addresses otherwise I wouldn't have done so. In this case the addy really isn't important so it's not a big deal.

Does anyone know what this UA is up to? Thanks. :)

[volatilegx]

> apologize for not obscuring the IP Address

No problem. It's kind of a touchy issue, meaning people are never sure whether to obscure IP addresses.

Since this forum is pre-moderated (meaning I or an admin have to approve all new posts), you can go ahead and post the IPs and I'll obscure them if necessary.