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Could this be a scammer or a phisher? (web crawlers on visitors page) Thread poster: Tom in London
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2008)
Italian to English
I don't often look through the list of people who've visited my profile but 90% of them seem to be looking at me via www.baidu.com, which is a Chinese ISP.
Since Chinese is not one of my languages and I have never done any business with China, I'm wondering whether unscrupulous people in China are trawling through all the profiles of everyone in Proz, with the aim of searching for personal information,... See more I don't often look through the list of people who've visited my profile but 90% of them seem to be looking at me via www.baidu.com, which is a Chinese ISP.
Since Chinese is not one of my languages and I have never done any business with China, I'm wondering whether unscrupulous people in China are trawling through all the profiles of everyone in Proz, with the aim of searching for personal information, email addresses, CVs, etc?
I would welcome the views of others. ▲ Collapse
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Same here. Probably just their crawlers checking and indexing ProZ content... (a bit too often)
[Edited at 2017-07-25 11:47 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Mirko Mainardi wrote:
Same here. Probably just their crawlers checking and indexing ProZ content... (a bit too often)
[Edited at 2017-07-25 11:47 GMT]
Why do they do that?
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| Search engines | Jul 25, 2017 |
AFAIK, basically to make that content discoverable and therefore searchable through their search engine. Even Google and Microsoft do that, among others, only it seems it's not explicitly mentioned in the "Came From" column.
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Maija Cirule 
Latvia
Local time: 22:26
German to English
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| Their IP addresses show that they do not come from China | Jul 25, 2017 |
most often they come from Los Angeles and other US cities. I don't think that this is a phishing tool but rather a harmless crawler grabbing all it can. In short, something along these lines, right now I have no time to create a better wording.
[Edited at 2017-07-25 12:15 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Maija Cirule wrote:
most often they come from Los Angeles and other US cities. I don't think that this is a phishing tool but rather a harmless crawler grabbing all it can.
Yes, but what are they grabbing, and why?
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Maija Cirule
Latvia
Local time: 22:26
German to English
+ ...
| I don't know | Jul 25, 2017 |
Tom in London wrote:
Maija Cirule wrote:
most often they come from Los Angeles and other US cities. I don't think that this is a phishing tool but rather a harmless crawler grabbing all it can.
Yes, but what are they grabbing, and why?
what and why, but my computer guy says that they are harmless and that's enough for me as I am a computer idiot and often cannot understand simplest things:(
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Gerard de Noord
France
Local time: 21:26
Member (2003)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Just a search engine bot | Jul 25, 2017 |
It's just a harmless search engine bot. Mirko explained it quite well.
Cheers,
Gerard
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Maija Cirule wrote:
Tom in London wrote:
Maija Cirule wrote:
most often they come from Los Angeles and other US cities. I don't think that this is a phishing tool but rather a harmless crawler grabbing all it can.
Yes, but what are they grabbing, and why?
what and why, but my computer guy says that they are harmless and that's enough for me as I am a computer idiot and often cannot understand simplest things:(
As a Mac user I don't have a "computer guy" (not needed). Why would these crawlers be crawling if there's no reason behind it? Surely it's done with a purpose? I'm very concerned about the increasing penetrability of internet systems that are supposed to be secure. Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
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Thomas Pfann
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2006)
English to German
+ ...
Tom in London wrote:
Why would these crawlers be crawling if there's no reason behind it? Surely it's done with a purpose? I'm very concerned about the increasing penetrability of internet systems that are supposed to be secure.
Of course, it has a purpose: They are indexing web pages. If they (ie. search engines like Bing, Baidu, Yahoo! etc.) started searching the internet every time a user enters a search query, it would take forever to get search results. Instead, they are crawling the internet constantly and systematically.
Tom in London wrote:
Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
No, because that's exactly the kind of activity which ProZ (and most of its users) want (so that they can be found by potential clients).
At least that's my simplified understanding of it.
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Maija Cirule
Latvia
Local time: 22:26
German to English
+ ...
Tom in London wrote:
Maija Cirule wrote:
Tom in London wrote:
Maija Cirule wrote:
most often they come from Los Angeles and other US cities. I don't think that this is a phishing tool but rather a harmless crawler grabbing all it can.
Yes, but what are they grabbing, and why?
what and why, but my computer guy says that they are harmless and that's enough for me as I am a computer idiot and often cannot understand simplest things:(
As a Mac user I don't have a "computer guy" (not needed). Why would these crawlers be crawling if there's no reason behind it? Surely it's done with a purpose? I'm very concerned about the increasing penetrability of internet systems that are supposed to be secure. Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
a tin foil hat and a hefty shot of gin and tonic would do the trick:)?
[Edited at 2017-07-25 17:11 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:26
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thomas Pfann wrote:
Tom in London wrote:
Why would these crawlers be crawling if there's no reason behind it? Surely it's done with a purpose? I'm very concerned about the increasing penetrability of internet systems that are supposed to be secure.
Of course, it has a purpose: They are indexing web pages. If they (ie. search engines like Bing, Baidu, Yahoo! etc.) started searching the internet every time a user enters a search query, it would take forever to get search results. Instead, they are crawling the internet constantly and systematically.
Tom in London wrote:
Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
No, because that's exactly the kind of activity which ProZ (and most of its users) want (so that they can be found by potential clients).
At least that's my simplified understanding of it.
(I think).
Thanks.
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They have been visiting my profile as well and Chinese is not one of my languages…
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| Yes, they should: | Jul 25, 2017 |
Tom in London wrote:
Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
... because those entries disturb the view into that part of my proz profile. I regularly check the IP visitor lookups by their region of origin to match them with requests from yet unknown outsourcers, as a part of my risk management (and out of sheer curiosity). It would be useful to implement a filter for plain baidu.com for all members who want to get rid of it. The filter shall not be part of a "plus" membership 
[Edited at 2017-07-25 13:16 GMT]
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| "Search engines" tab | Jul 25, 2017 |
Matthias Brombach wrote:
Tom in London wrote:
Shouldn't Proz be doing something to prevent this kind of activity?
... because those entries disturb the view into that part of my proz profile. I regularly check the IP visitor lookups by their region of origin to match them with requests from yet unknown outsourcers, as a part of my risk management (and out of sheer curiosity). It would be useful to implement a filter for plain baidu.com for all members who want to get rid of it. The filter shall not be part of a "plus" membership
Hmm... on second thought, crawlers should already be filtered out and listed under the "Search engine" tab... so maybe those visits are in fact from real people using the Chinese search engine?
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