Don't ban schools :P

[Peter]

I just feel like I have to share this... :smile:

Lately I have been looking at the stats for my site (not the one linked from here) and I thought they looked suspicious, getting many visitors from different but very similar IPs, sometimes almost at the same time. I put an IP ban on these IP ranges but only for a few minutes because luckily I made some research (IP whois and googling).

What I found was that the IPs that I got most traffic from seem to be related to schools. The page that most people visited could actually be useful in some math classes so it's reasonable to believe that pupils talk with each other and that's why many people visited at the same time, which I had thought were some kind of bot attack.

I was still not convinced. Maybe school computers are often infected? But after checking what days people visited I found that there was a gap during the weekend, and the visiting times seems to be reasonable school times as well.

So now I'm happy that some of the visitors that I thought were fake probably are not. Well, I probably get some fake visitors but not the bulk of them as I had feared.

 

[perryoo11]

:wacko: lol this happend me a time ago. just had just over 100 page hits. but all from 1 ip.
did an ip whois and looked that it where a school. then i havn't looked my forum yet.
just where arounf 60 active members. im still thinking it where fake:unknown:.

but its a cool story you have shared with us.

 

[Genesis]

So now I'm happy that some of the visitors that I thought were fake probably are not. Well, I probably get some fake visitors but not the bulk of them as I had feared.

It's neat they found your Website. Which page is it that they visited the most? Was it the games page? Wonder how they searched to get your Website?

 

[Peter]

It's neat they found your Website. Which page is it that they visited the most? Was it the games page? Wonder how they searched to get your Website?

It's not the Dataapa site, but another one that I have been working on. I don't want to post it here. The language is not English anyway.

The page they visited the most has to do with dices. It's the only page that ranks number one on a few key phrases. This page alone make up about 50 % of all page views, but the site is still young so we are not talking about massive numbers here.

 

[Genesis]

I think it's fantastic though Peter. Well done and thank you for sharing it! :good:

 

[Yozora]

Oh, nice info! That's good to know for anyone who has informational content on their site.

 

[Announcement]

I just feel like I have to share this... :smile:

Lately I have been looking at the stats for my site (not the one linked from here) and I thought they looked suspicious, getting many visitors from different but very similar IPs, sometimes almost at the same time. I put an IP ban on these IP ranges but only for a few minutes because luckily I made some research (IP whois and googling).

What I found was that the IPs that I got most traffic from seem to be related to schools. The page that most people visited could actually be useful in some math classes so it's reasonable to believe that pupils talk with each other and that's why many people visited at the same time, which I had thought were some kind of bot attack.

I was still not convinced. Maybe school computers are often infected? But after checking what days people visited I found that there was a gap during the weekend, and the visiting times seems to be reasonable school times as well.

So now I'm happy that some of the visitors that I thought were fake probably are not. Well, I probably get some fake visitors but not the bulk of them as I had feared.

wouldn't this just promote little kids and proxies.
Bad for legal issues, bad for bandwidth.

 

[Genesis]

Bad for legal issues, bad for bandwidth.

Suggest that if you're posting for hosting you provide some discussion in your posts in order to earn quality credits. What do you mean with "bad for legal issues and bad for bandwidth"? And why would it be bad?

 

[Peter]

I have found the page in question mentioned at two school related locations.

One is a presentation, similar to PowerPoint but on a website, that looks like it has been done by a teacher. The link is not clickable so it has to be copied manually.

The other link is on a school class's blog at wordpress.com. This is a real link (nofollow) but I have never seen it as a referer in my logs. It's probably because I use HTTP and they use HTTPS which makes the referer not show up.

I have also noticed that the pupils are not always that good at spelling the URL correctly, partly to blame on me because I have used alternatives for non-ascii letters, so I have now set up redirects for the most common misspellings.