Package: lurker Version: 2.1-13 Severity: minor By default, lurker includes a javascript image link on each email that looks something like this:
javascript:trash('http://lists.example.com/lurker/zap/20100318.113155.0e0de092.en.html');
Because this link just appears to a non-human client like any other page
link, crawlers such as googlebot will attempt to follow it.
At the very least this causes log spam of "Password:" prompt and then
failed password notification, and of course the wasted bandwidth of
having the bots follow all these links, which appear on every page of
the archive.
It may be possible to keep bots out with a suitable robots.txt, e.g.:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /lurker/zap/
However, this seems to have limited effect even against googlebot.
In general using simple GET URLs for things which have an action (i.e.,
deleting an email from the archive) is bad form. This should really be
done as a proper form via POST, then bots would ignore it.
It might also be nice to document a simple way to remove the link
entirely. This looks promising:
http://www.terpstra.ca/lurker/message/20060423.233328.bd5efdb8.en.html
Cheers,
Andy
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.4
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages lurker depends on:
ii adduser 3.110 add and remove users and groups
ii apache2 2.2.9-10+lenny6 Apache HTTP Server metapackage
ii apache2-mpm-prefork [h 2.2.9-10+lenny6 Apache HTTP Server - traditional n
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.24 Debian configuration management sy
ii libc6 2.7-18lenny2 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libgcc1 1:4.3.2-1.1 GCC support library
ii libmimelib1c2a 4:3.5.9-5 KDE mime library
ii libstdc++6 4.3.2-1.1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii passwd 1:4.1.1-6+lenny1 change and administer password and
ii ucf 3.0016 Update Configuration File: preserv
ii xsltproc 1.1.24-2 XSLT command line processor
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime
lurker recommends no packages.
Versions of packages lurker suggests:
ii gnupg 1.4.9-3+lenny1 GNU privacy guard - a free PGP rep
ii mailman 1:2.1.11-11 Powerful, web-based mailing list m
-- debconf information excluded
--
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"It is I, Simon Quinlank. The chief conductor on the bus that is called
hobby." -- Simon Quinlank
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