The life and times of purplekitten

From: Kathy Bragg [mailto:kathy@purplekitten.co.uk]
Sent: 05 February 2006 11:37
To: ‘webmaster@********* – better now?’
Subject: From purplekitten.co.uk
Importance: High

Hi *,

Whilst I appreciate your interest in the photographs of my husband, I would appreciate it if you would cease your DoS on my webserver. Your spider is requesting the photographs so fast that our DSL connection is being overwhelmed, resulting in a severe degradation of our service.

You might not have noticed but your requests are now being met with a 403, and will continue to do so, so that we remain connected to the internet. Yes, it was that bad.

I have no objections to people looking at my site, that is what it is there for. But I do object when we get knocked off the internet because some thoughtless spider is downloaded every single picture with barely a space for breath.

I’m sure you understand our point of view on this matter, as you are a Network Manager. I’m sure you wouldn’t like the same thing to be happening to your network.

Please cease and desist this inconsiderate spidering of my site.

Many thanks

Kathy Bragg
Webmistress of purplekitten.co.uk

Sample log provided below:
*.*.*.*- – [05/Feb/2006:11:31:30 +0000] “GET /pictures/phil/2004-06-15%20029.AVI HTTP/1.1″ 403 351 “http://www.purplekitten.co.uk/pictures/phil/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)”
*.*.*.*- – [05/Feb/2006:11:31:31 +0000] “GET /pictures/phil/2004-06-15%20030.AVI HTTP/1.1″ 403 351 “http://www.purplekitten.co.uk/pictures/phil/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)”
*.*.*.*- – [05/Feb/2006:11:31:31 +0000] “GET /pictures/phil/imgp0238.jpg HTTP/1.1″ 403 345 “http://www.purplekitten.co.uk/pictures/phil/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)”
*.*.*.*- – [05/Feb/2006:11:31:32 +0000] “GET /pictures/phil/imgp0239.jpg HTTP/1.1″ 403 345 “http://www.purplekitten.co.uk/pictures/phil/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)”