OWLer

[lucy24]

Just started seeing this:

IP: 138.246.236.abc
UA: OWLer/0.1 (built with StormCrawler; https://ows.eu/owler; [e-mail]
robots.txt: yes
Headers: humanoid
Requests: various interior pages, no non-page files

I've only met it twice, so I don't know if it will be the identical IP every time. Link in the UA leads to a reasonably informative page.

Each individual visit is preceded by robots.txt. “Humanoid headers” means that the request wasn’t blocked; since they only asked for a handful of pages, none roboted-out, I’ve provisionally put them in the “no skin off my nose” category.

They're clearly operating off a shopping list, because so far they haven't requested the front page, let alone any pages linked directly therefrom. fwiw, their very first requested page was the one listed in this site's profile.

We will not talk about how long I had to look for this subforum, as I’d forgotten its new name.

[lucy24]

Update: A few days later I saw it again on two different sites, this time from

132.231.12.abc

Both 138.246 and 132.231 belong to Geman universities (different ones). As before, requested various internal pages, no systematic spidering.