Re: Proposal to advertise UA automation

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

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