Simon mentioned this in another mailing list where I answered that this is a powerful feature and that at the end of the day it's admins who must use it properly.
On Fri, 30 May 1997, Simon Wilkinson wrote: > >Number: 640 > >Category: general > >Synopsis: ErrorDocument returns redirects > >Confidential: no > >Severity: serious > >Priority: medium > >Responsible: apache (Apache HTTP Project) > >State: open > >Class: sw-bug > >Submitter-Id: apache > >Arrival-Date: Fri May 30 12:40:05 1997 > >Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Organization: > apache > >Release: 1.2b10 > >Environment: > SunOS 4.1.4, built using gcc 2.7.2.1, > SunOS vortis 4.1.4 5 sun4 > >Description: > The ErrorDocument configuration option returns redirects for non-existent > pages, > when an absolute URL is specified. This is hinted at in the documentation, but > I feel it is a serious problem, as it can lead to servers where every > incorrect > document on the server looks, to a search engine, like it is a correct (if > redirected) response. > > This behaviour merges the 4xx and 3xx return codes until they are virtually > useless. > >How-To-Repeat: > Go to any site with an external ErrorDocument and look at the response from an > incorrect URL. > >Fix: > Either get rid of this (I can see way this would be hard though :-), or > include > a warning in the documentation about how bad it is to return a redirect for > a document that doesn't really exist > >Audit-Trail: > >Unformatted: > > > > -- Rob Hartill Internet Movie Database (Ltd) http://www.moviedatabase.com/ .. a site for sore eyes.
