[EXPLAINED]"You have been blocked by our clever bot" ???

[El Heggunte]

WTF

For your information, there is no such thing as a clever bot.

P.S.: Hmmm, the problem is older than I thought; it just got worse recently:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/373727-You-have-been-blocked-by-our-clever-bot

[Cornucopia]

Increasingly, I've encountered sites that complain if you have adblockers/pop-up blockers and won't advance to the main info section until you disable them.
My response has invariably been: "bye-bye idiots, your info isn't ever going to be THAT vital to me. Not coming back!"

Scott

[usually_quiet]

In VideoHelp's case, it appears the clever bot thinks the IP address that it's blocking is assigned to a computer that is doing something naughty. The post El Heggunte linked to mentioned a couple of those things.

Some people have indeed done too much scraping, to the point where big chunks of VideoHelp were copied and used to create other websites. It hasn't happened recently, but several years ago, Google and Yahoo would on occasion turn up one of these websites when I was looking for information to answer a question here. I even found some of my own posts, attributed to a different user name.

[El Heggunte]

The image in post #1 is from a thread that I tried to start in the Test forum.

But what actually triggered the "clever bot" response was my reply in the thread below:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/380504-How-can-I-update-x265-encoder-in-Staxrip?p=2...26#post2459826

The original text contained only the URL to LigH's x265 directory @ Mediafire,
nothing more. Conclusion:

if your post or reply is just a hyperlink to somewhere, then you must be a spammer.

[ron spencer]

Netscape 5?

[El Heggunte]

Netscape 5?

Seamonkey 2.38, actually.

http://cosmicat.com/extensions/titletweak/

[Cornucopia]

Gotcha. 2 separate issues then...

Scott

[KarMa]

For your information, there is no such thing as a clever bot.

Me searching for Geraldo Rivera.

https://www.google.com/#q=fox+news+guy+with+mustache
https://www.bing.com/search?q=fox+news+guy+with+mustache&go=Submit&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=f...9E10CDF39F9DE\
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fox+news+guy+with+mustache&t=hn&ia=web
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylc=X3oDMTFiN25laTRvBF9TAzIwMjM1MzgwNzUEaXRjAzEEc2VjA...p=mss&ei=UTF-8

[El Heggunte]

For your information, there is no such thing as a clever bot.

Me searching for Geraldo Rivera.

https://www.google.com/#q=fox+news+guy+with+mustache

Google generates different query strings, depending on "Javascript.status".

#q=fox+news+guy+with+mustache redirects to Google's ``default´´ when Javascript is disabled...

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22in+order+to+show+you+the+...e+Search&gbv=1

[Baldrick]

The image in post #1 is from a thread that I tried to start in the Test forum.

But what actually triggered the "clever bot" response was my reply in the thread below:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/380504-How-can-I-update-x265-encoder-in-Staxrip?p=2...26#post2459826

The original text contained only the URL to LigH's x265 directory @ Mediafire,
nothing more. Conclusion:

if your post or reply is just a hyperlink to somewhere, then you must be a spammer.

It could be my spam/hack filter I use. It blocks some special text/code. What was the mediafire url?

[El Heggunte]

It could be my spam/hack filter I use. It blocks some special text/code.

What was the mediafire url?

This one:

https://www.mediafire.com/?6lfp2jlygogwa

[Baldrick]

But you can post it now?

https://www.mediafire.com/?6lfp2jlygogwa

[El Heggunte]

ONLY IF the entire text of the post contains anything besides the URL itself

[Baldrick]

ONLY IF the entire text of the post contains anything besides the URL itself

Yup. It's blocked by a security addon for my webserver. Not the smartest bot....

But I don't think I will disable it though. The security addon blocks lots of bad crap also.

[El Heggunte]

^ Okay, so be it.

But the error message should be clearer... in this case, at least.

"You have been blocked by our clever bot" is unhelpful and misleading

[Baldrick]

I have now changed the error message so you get some idea what to do.