UserAgent fake detection

I have this HTTP request, I expected this, but WURFL is returning that. Please provide enough data to reproduce the problem.
opticaller
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 30, 2017 10:09 am

UserAgent fake detection

Postby opticaller » Tue May 30, 2017 10:12 am

This is UserAgen is comming from iPhone but we are getting Bot or Clrwler please can you let us know why when this user agent will be resolved

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.4 facebookexternalhit/1.1 Facebot Twitterbot/1.0

aaronp
Posts: 242
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2015 12:39 pm

Re: UserAgent fake detection

Postby aaronp » Tue May 30, 2017 10:56 am

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out to us. The provided user agent string is properly being identified as a bot as it is indeed a bot. This can be seen within the user agent's information:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.4 facebookexternalhit/1.1 Facebot Twitterbot/1.0

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and I'll be glad to assist!

Aaron

opticaller
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 30, 2017 10:09 am

Re: UserAgent fake detection

Postby opticaller » Wed May 31, 2017 5:55 am

Hi,

Well, this happens when a regular iOS/iPhone user clicks on a url sent from us within a regular SMS i.e. in the SMS inbox of the phone.
To us this is a very normal case as well as our customers using iPhones so can something be done to not handle this as some Bot or Crawler? This is really when we need to find out what device the users has and it´s not a Bot or Crawler.

BR / Jörgen

aaronp
Posts: 242
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2015 12:39 pm

Re: UserAgent fake detection

Postby aaronp » Wed May 31, 2017 1:09 pm

Hi Jörgen,

The provided user agent resembles that of a Mac desktop:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.4 facebookexternalhit/1.1 Facebot Twitterbot/1.0

vs an iPhone user agent:

Mozilla/6.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25

Because of this, as well as the bot information at the end of the string, we cannot add it to our database as we consider it invalid. However, if you wish to override our classification, you may apply a patch file so that the user agent does not identify as a bot.

The following documentation will guide you on setting up and applying a patch file to override WURFL values:
https://docs.scientiamobile.com/guides/patch-files

Thanks,

Aaron

opticaller
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 30, 2017 10:09 am

Re: UserAgent fake detection

Postby opticaller » Thu Jun 01, 2017 6:49 am

Hi,

I´m not sure what the ambition is with the database but at least we see this information from User Agents using iPhones starting middle of March this year. Believe me it´s not from a Mac desktop computer even though this info can be seen. We can also see what a “true” iPhone user agent looks like but the problem here is that it´s really an iPhone user that clicks on the url from the iPhone i.e. this is how Apple and iOS/iPhone is working nowadays and to be able to rely on the database it would of course be best for everyone that it can recognize this as an iPhone user agent rather than classifying it as a Bot or Crawler.
Sure we can do our individual patch but that will only solve this issue for us. This can hardly be a problem that only affects us and our worldwide customers using iPhones and it would be better if a solution could be made for everyone to take advantage of.

Kind Regards,

/Jörgen

aaronp
Posts: 242
Joined: Wed Dec 09, 2015 12:39 pm

Re: UserAgent fake detection

Postby aaronp » Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:01 am

Hi,

I see what you are saying and while I don't doubt that the user agent is coming from an iPhone, the user agent string does not align with the protocol for an iPhone user agent string and thus, we cannot add it to our database. I'll speak with my mobile data team once more and, should anything change, I will surely let you know.

Thanks,

Aaron


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests