Re: Proposal to advertise UA automation

I'll second that.

Jacob H. Pratt

On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote:

> To get greater visibility for this proposal, you probably want to re-post
> it over at https://discourse.wicg.io/
>
>   —Mike
>
> Sergey Shekyan <shekyan@gmail.com>, 2017-01-17 21:12 -0800:
> > Archived-At: <http://www.w3.org/mid/CAPkvmc8GZVPVW+APk=6Sa9Mj52mJ=
> bTsW4sK0GzhJeOAqbB-0g@mail.gmail.com>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'd like to discuss benefits of advertising user agent automation. I
> > started the topic at webappsec (
> > https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webappsec/2017Jan/0004.html
> ),
> > but this mailing list seems to be more suitable for the topic.
> >
> > The idea is to attach an HTTP request header to navigation requests that
> > are initiated by automation tools, by which I mean headless browsers, web
> > driver driven browsers, etc.
> >
> > The benefit for the webste operator is to have a choice in responding to
> > such requests differently. For example, do not serve ads, suggest using
> API
> > scraping rather that loading heavy resources, send through failed CAPTCHA
> > route, etc.
> >
> > This approach intersects with robots.txt a little, but none of modern UA
> > automation tools honor robots.txt, and implementing the advertising flag
> > seems to be relatively easy.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Sergey Shekyan
>
> --
> Michael[tm] Smith https://sideshowbarker.net/
>