WinWebBot by balaena.com

[dstiles]

This came in today. Not seen before but it may have visited and been blocked by a "dump" filter.

WinWebBot
bot IP: 62.233.101.nnn

UA:
WinWebBot/1.0; (Balaena Ltd, UK); http:--www-balaena-com/winwebbot.html; winwebbot@balaena-com;)

(my replacement of slashes and dots by hyphens)

IP is from Iomart Hosting's range 62.233.100.0 - 62.233.115.255

The URL returns a 301 page redirecting to another IP in the Iomart range - no domain, just replaces www.etc with the IP and the page. Google returns the same IP for a search on the domain name.

Google cache page shows a page with the title "Integrate Knowledge : Unleash Potential" which, with other obscurantist text on the page suggests scraping for sale.

Domain name first registered in 2000 by a UK company.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 11:33 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2009]
[edit reason] disabled smileys [/edit]

[jabz]

I have this one on disallow in my robots.txt for a longer time.

[Pfui]

I saw the same bot, apparently from the same host, earlier this month.

Last Fall, the host range used a different bot. The masidani URL in the UA has the exact same IP as its serverfarm host:

62-233-102-zzz.easydservers.com
masidani_bot_v0.3 [e-mail]

robots.txt? YES, but ignored

So many serverfarms are nothing but trouble.