YahooMobile - bot or proxy?

[dstiles]

I'm getting a lot of hits from yahoo ranges with rDNS that includes the word "mobile" in some position or other. The UA is:

YahooMobile/1.0 (Resource; server; 1.0.0)

Header fields are always blank, as far as I can see, with the exception of Accept which is */*.

Ranges so far seem to be:

68.142.243.48 - 68.142.243.99
69.147.114.64 - 69.147.114.66
69.147.114.104 - 69.147.114.109
69.147.115.58 - 69.147.115.61
69.147.115.64 - 69.147.115.79

It's only begun hitting my server during the past couple of weeks - first encouter seems to be 14 October. Mostly (but not always) it hits a specific site. My impression is of a proxy rather than a bot.

Anyone else seeing this and can shed some light on it?

[Pfui]

The UA's been around a long time [webmasterworld.com...] but I'm also seeing renewed activity -- 47 hits to one site since Oct. 1, only asking for root or main directory page by name.

Prior thread indicates it's accelerator-related. No clue here.

rDNS is always:
ycar2.mobile.re3.yahoo.com
(a.k.a.: 69.147.115.59)

robots.txt? NO

[dstiles]

Forgot to say: there is always a FWD_VIA field giving a "domestic" IP, usually twice and, as you mentioned, hitting the home page each time. 16 hits (8 doubles) in a couple of hours to three sites.

My system is killing the "proxy" IP (because of the headers) but not the domestic IPs so presumably they can still access the site. However, the site logs do not show the domestic IPs so a) the visitor was scared away or b) there isn't a second visit planned.