I'd be interested to know what folks consider as Mysterious User Agents in 2015?
keyplyr
9:51 pm on Sep 6, 2015 (gmt 0)
Well that legacy thread and many of its contributors were new to the forum so most everything may have been considered "mysterious" to them.
To me nothing is actually mysterious. If it requests my files... it wants my files. I never truly know what is actually done with my files. 1/3 of the agents don't say, another 1/3 say but lie, and the remaining 1/3 tell you what you want to hear then do what they want anyway.
Like with anything on the internet, a webmaster needs to weigh the pros & cons and decide to allow the agent or not.
wilderness
12:42 am on Sep 7, 2015 (gmt 0)
bull, carfac and fiestagirl (not to mention Jim) were regular contributors to this forum. They may have been new in 2002, however they stand on their own.
keyplyr
1:33 am on Sep 7, 2015 (gmt 0)
I said *many* not *all*.
As this thread was started over 13 years ago in 2002, ratman, bull, carfac, NameNick, Finder and fiestagirl were new at that time. I could revise my comment to say *most* as there were only 2 that were not new, and one of them (SmallTime) had less than a year at the time of posting.
About "standing on their own" - I am not implying that just because someone is new to these forums, they are not knowledgeable... but possibly do not have the long-time experience as one who has been here for years.
lucy24
2:04 am on Sep 7, 2015 (gmt 0)
Idle query: How many recognizable User-Agents that were regularly seen in 2002 are still in use today?
Can anything appended to MSIE ever be considered "mysterious"? Time was, every last one would come trailing a string of NET CLR as long as your arm.
:: detour to check something ::
Oh. I thought MSIE 9 or 10 had dumped all that NET CLR stuff, but it still shows up sporadically. Doesn't seem to predate 5, though.
But seriously... The one obvious new area since 2002 is the vast number of mobile UAs. I suspect that in ten years' time there will be fewer of them-- that is, more in total, but divisible into fewer families. Right now, you see something new and the immediate reaction is bound to be "Is that some kind of mobile?"
keyplyr
2:46 am on Sep 7, 2015 (gmt 0)
Idle query: How many recognizable User-Agents that were regularly seen in 2002 are still in use today?
At that time (2002) most of my blocking schema was by UA w/ just a few rewrites using IP ranges.
Around 2007 I started to notice a large % of the UAs had not come around for a very long time so I began removing them.
Somewhere around 2012 I removed almost all UA blocks and left only about 50 (that may seem like a large number but at one point I had approx 400.)
Now because of HEAD requests filtering out a lot of bots, I blacklist only about 20 specific UAs (those that do not fit my whitelist filters.)
