[meteorite-list] Strange website visitor (bot?)

From: Galactic Stone & Ironworks <meteoritemike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:46:08 -0500
Message-ID: <CAKBPJW9emVGJ+vPmvGFv18TcMgAwXYC9LiG4V+Br=RTtQqQ2_A_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hi Paul and List,

I don't have direct access to my FTP and server commands because I use
a commercial ecommerce service that is remotely hosted. Usually this
is a good thing because they handle all the technical work, and I get
a turn-key store ready to fill with inventory. But I don't get a lot
of backend access. I'll contact my service rep and see if he can do
this for me, or at least look into it.

The bot is a strange one. I've tried to identify it, but have come up
dry on hard details. I can get the same lookup data that everyone
else can see by running the IP address. I tried Googling the
addresses and contact info I came across, but it didn't match much of
anything on the web. I figure if it was a Google bot, or something
important, there would be some record of it floating around on the
web. This visitor is an unknown.

I do know it's a bot because it follows a very strict pattern and it
has not changed it's pattern in response to changes I made. It keeps
accessing the same two pages - my catagory listing page for lunar
micromounts and a 1.5kg Campo iron that was sold. It will appear with
the same referring URL, which is another category page on my website,
but yet it doesn't show up on the logs until it hits the lunar micro
page or the 1.5kg Campo page. In other words, it is "carrying around"
the URL it shows as a referrer, but it accesses each page on my site
directly (as if from a boomark).

It stays on those pages for about 20-30 seconds and then it vanishes
for 2-3 minutes before returning and doing the same thing all over
again.

I deleted the 1.5kg Campo page, so now it delivers a 404 redirect if
requested. And the bot still keeps trying to access it.

It's not hitting me so much that it is becoming a bandwidth problem
yet, but it's very persistent. Typically a bot will visit for a few
minutes or a few hours, then move on. This one has been doing this
for days now.

I was just curious if this bot had been hitting other meteorite sites.
 It seems keenly interested in lunaites and Campos. LOL

Best regards,

MikeG

-- 
*************************************************
Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com
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***************************************************
On 12/27/11, Paul Harris <paul at meteorite.com> wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> If your site is on a Apache Web Server you can do the following in your
> .htaccess file.
>
> order allow,deny
> deny from 114.181.212.43
> allow from all
>
> And no your not just the lucky one.  All sites are hit by bots both good
> and bad.  Just make sure you're not blocking a search engine indexing
> your site.
>
> Paul
>
>
> On 12/27/2011 7:48 AM, Galactic Stone & Ironworks wrote:
>> Hi List,
>>
>> I've had about 2000 visits to my website (and counting) from an IP
>> address in Nerima Japan. It keeps accessing the same two pages for
>> about 20 seconds, then it goes away. A few minutes later, it comes
>> back. It's been doing this for about two days now. I Googled the IP
>> address and it didn't raise any red flags or come back as a known bot.
>> I deleted one of the webpages, and the visitor keeps trying to access
>> it, so I am positive this is a bot of some sort. Is there any way to
>> identify it or block it? The IP is - 114.181.212.43
>>
>> Is anyone else getting this attention, or am I just the lucky one?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> MikeG
>>
>
>

Received on Tue 27 Dec 2011 11:46:08 AM PST