Miscellaneous Hacks - Ban Spiders by User Agent

What this mod does
With this mod you can enter User Agents to watch or ban, you can also recieve emails or have an Output.txt created and updated with time and date of visits. It doesn't just have to be spiders, you can watch, log or ban any useragent!

How to install
Simply import the product ban_spider, the mod is active by default but none of the other options are turned on.

What is a UserAgent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

Understanding a UserAgent string
http://user-agent-string.info/parse

Genuine User Getting Blocked?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=105

Tools to help
http://whatsmyuseragent.com/SwitchingUserAgents.asp
http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/SimulateUserAgent.asp

FAQ
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=137

How does it work?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=381

What's a bot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spambot

How do i ban a bot?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=318
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....7&postcount=51

Where's output.txt located?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=216

Bad bot lists
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=259
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=224
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=281

Tested on vb3.7.x, vB3.8.x , vB4.x.x but should work on any version.

__________________________________________________ __________________
Special thanks to:
Lior
KH99
BoP5
for helping me sort out a few issues

...and beta testers
ForceHSS (Special thanks to Force for latest testing)
ozzy47
GreyHost

If you use this please mark as INSTALLED

History
9th June 2011 Orginal xml added
12th June 2011 Added both email notification and text file logging
22nd June 2011 Version 2.0.0, Added create thread on activity

1. Added match facility you can now use something like Yandex and it will match MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; YANDEXBOT/3.0; +HTTP://YANDEX.COM/BOTS)
2. Added clickable link to visited thread

22nd September 2011 added user redirect url selection
08th October Beta testing started for thread creation.
20th October Beta testing started for emailing.
21st October Beta testing complete Ver 3.0.0 uploaded
29th October minor fix added to cope with empty userid on thread creation
30th October Beta testing automatic redirection to spiders/bots IP
31st October New xml uploaded with automatic redirect to IP
25th November Minor fix for blank forumid fixed
26th November 2011 Fixed version check & create thread Off by default
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.0 uploaded, Hook changed extra logging and statistics added by Ozzy47 (Chris)
18th December 2014 Version 3.1.1 uploaded, prevented spiders being counted when mod turned off.
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.2 uploaded, due to rogue code from another mod
The Bad Bots list is now included in the product
Please prune out all those that you wish to be able to see your site (i suggest you definately prune out "DA" and "Custo" :

Support will now only be given to those who have this mod marked as INSTALLED

[ozzy47]

In your ban list you have InternetSeer.com

That would not be the same as this, Internet Seer Spider
because that is a web site monitoring service.

[Simon Lloyd]

You may see in your WOL Internet Seer Spider but you need to know it's full UA (here's one: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Atwatch-InternetSeer monitoring; MSIE 6.0; ) Gecko) so we can decipher which part if any is being blocked, Maybe this will help you get them back http://www.internetseer.com/help/faq.xtp

Just a word though, internetseer has always been just an email scraper, they trade off with "monitoring" your site or of course you can pay them to do it, either way they are archiving email addresses found on your site - still want to use 'em?

As a final word, i did mention when posting the list of bad bots (both here in the thread and the txt file) to prune out those that you want to be able to see your site, you might have like to also prune out ia_archiver, you should definitely prune out DA and custo (as should most people).

[Simon Lloyd]

Beta testing is going well , those that are using the beta please pm me any results you have or bugs. If all is well i'll release it as stable next week

[ForceHSS]

Will post here and not pm. So far no bugs in the bot posting still have to test the other settings but I am sure others have but will test them as well

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by ForceHSS

Will post here and not pm. So far no bugs in the bot posting still have to test the other settings but I am sure others have but will test them as well

Posting here is great, other folk get to know how it's going and if anything what to look out for

[GreyGhost]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Posting here is great, other folk get to know how it's going and if anything what to look out for

You're welcome to quote my PMs here Simon, if you feel they'll be at all informative.
Although I will be removing the images after a few days so you may want to leave them out.

8-)

[ForceHSS]

the email part of it dont seem to work

[ozzy47]

I still see Baidu hitting my site every so often, and the last one that was banned was 10/11/2011 according to forum post and output.txt

[Simon Lloyd]

Well baidu is persistant , remember that you are getting notification BEFORE a thread or forum loads properly for them.

@ForceHSS & GreyGhost i'll work on the emailing a little later

[stator]

I received this error after activation of "Write to log" option

Warning: fopen(output.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in [path]/includes/functions.php(7207) : eval()'d code on line 99