in reply to (OT) safe to mechanize?

If you want a better chance of going undetected you could pause between requests, perhaps by using WWW::Mechanize::Sleepy.

It would also be wise to set your user agent to something normal.

This might be sufficient to avoid suspicion for most sites, but some sites will be more paranoid (I'd imagine safari would be one of these).

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Re^2: (OT) safe to mechanize?
by imp (Priest) on Aug 03, 2006 at 14:02 UTC
    As I mentioned, a sufficiently paranoid site will likely catch you, by detecting behaviour that is not typical of humans.

    A couple suspicious activities:

    • Opening every link of a page in sequence
    • Opening links that are not visible. This could be due to style settings, or being in an invisible block
    If it's a commercial site with a monetary interest to protect, you will likely be caught.
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