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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4 Answers
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 is in the .zip files?
The use of tools to download your files does not mean they are doing anything illegal. In fact, 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.
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.
We can Google zip files easily on a site. And for downloading we need not 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...
answered Aug 15, 2011 at 10:03
