Topsy.com / labs.topsy.com / butterfly.topsy.com

Butterfly/1.0 *and* libwww-perl

[Pfui]

The bot's been around for a couple of months. Will be Twitter-related, or so its bot-URL says. Then again, the info also says the bot respects robots.txt... Well, yes, it has when it's shown up using:

butterfly.topsy.com
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Butterfly/1.0; +http://labs.topsy.com/butterfly.html) Gecko/2009032608 Firefox/3.0.8

But not today, when its host came a'calling using:

butterfly.topsy.com
libwww-perl/5.825

Courtesy of mod_incrediBILL's Libs & Tools thread [webmasterworld.com]: "This is a general-purpose application library for retrieving HTTP documents used by PERL scripts typically from Linux servers. This particular library is often associated with hacking attempts and botnet attacks and should be blocked in general."

Buh-bye, butterfly.(topsy.com)

[Pfui]

On a related note, from this site's Home Page (highlighted posts), dated today:

Topsy Search Engine Opens its Virtual Doors [webmasterworld.com]