Web-non-sense

aka websense, surfcontrol, mailcontrol and blackspider

[caribguy]

Adding to the earlier thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

Now also from 208.87.234.nnn

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)"

[Bewenched]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/3822512.htm [webmasterworld.com] by incredibill - 9:36 pm on Jan. 8, 2009 (PST -8)

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NetRange: 208.80.192.0 - 208.80.199.255
CIDR: 208.80.192.0/21
websense.com

[Samizdata]

I had an amusing encounter with Websense today.

I happened to be visiting an agency that helps unemployed people find jobs, and being curious I suggested to a member of staff that he show me some vacancies for web designers and developers, and he duly did a Google search.

High in the SERPs was an IT agency that claimed to offer such vacancies, so he clicked the link.

Lo and behold, a Websense logo appeared on the screen - the site was blocked.

Unfortunately I was too busy laughing to note the name of the site.

...

[caribguy]

It appears that users can click past the warning.

Doing so results in that site's webmaster seeing things like 10.0.0.nnn:15871/cgi-bin/blockoptions.cgi as a referrer.

[GaryK]

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.5; Windows NT 5.1)
208.80.194.?
static-208-80-194-?.as13448.com
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OrgName: Websense, Inc
OrgID: WEBSE-6
Address: 10240 Sorrento Valley Road
City: San Diego
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 92121
Country: US

It took the default root page from all of my sites.

I don't think there ever was a MSIE 6.5 so that could be a good way to look for this otherwise seemingly valid UA. Or you could just ban all the Websense net ranges.

With that MSIE 6.5 thing in mind I found two other UAs that used it. Not sure if they're from Websense though.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.5; Win32)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.5; Windows NT 5.0)