I'm running a website for a while and I'm still learning how to manage it. One thing I've noticed is that some visitors download all zip files in the same order ( there is a pattern of downloads). I've also noticed that the referrers of those visitors are always blank. I think these downloads are done automatically with the help of certain software. My question is: Are those visitors hackers? If they are, why are they doing this when they can download my files legally?
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 14 '11 at 23:28
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Maybe they are hackers - it is not a bad thing unless they are crackers as well. Maybe downloading with the help of automated tools is just easier than clicking all files manually - especially when the download tool would be able to put them right where one needs/wants them. |
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It's very unlikely they're hacking anything. It's quite likely they're just using a robot/macro to download all the .zip files so that they don't have to manually click each one. What type of files are in the .zip files? |
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The use of tools to download your files does not mean they are doing anything illegal. Infact if your files are made available on your website, I don't see downloading them in any particular way could be construed as illegal. Perhaps if the resources you make available on the website are useful downloaded en-mass, perhaps you should make a single download for them. |
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We can google zip files easily on a site. And for downloading we need not to visit the site. Still if you wanna save them you can control crawlers through robots.txt, you can write some script which generates a temporary download link. It's not hacking... |
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