On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 at 16:37, Страхиња Радић <[email protected]> wrote:
> Дана 26/01/23 11:44AM, Adam Van Ymeren написа: > > I followed a link from undeadly.org and got redirected to the aptly > > named theannoyingsite.com > > > > Suffice to say this is pretty annoying, and in my opinion hurts the > > credibility of the project and of sites like undeadly.org that try to > > link to interesting things. > > > > This appears to be intentional based upon whether some stale ipk= > > param is in the url. > >> $ curl ' https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/multimedia/openwv/pkg/README?rev=1.1&ipk=K8Bn8w6mSMA6F3ekkYPcACkE0Nn4G729RUNolBYq_4M ' > It also happens when the browser doesn't supply the referrer header. > > https://marc.info/?t=176402576800001&r=1&w=2 > https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=176406809623993&w=2 > https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=176408086402658&w=2 > > tl;dr: It's an anti-spam/anti-scraping measure. > There's no way this is even effective; because the "AI" bots simply send out the fake www.google.com and other popular websites in place of the referral, which is only worse, because now they're spamming your analytics, too. It's also horrible for usability. When I click on the above link in a new tab, it opens up the website that you're redirected to (looks like it's been changed to "localhost/" without any params now), without any sign of the original site — the BACK button has no history. So, if you're multi-tabbing, or clicking non-raw "friendly" links (e.g., in PDF documents, or in HTML emails or webpages), you wouldn't even know what the link was supposed to have been. You're NOT afforded the URI to indicate the path of the file being referenced, it's just a bare "localhost/" now. There's no proper error message to indicate the real issue. You cannot use an alternative service to find the file, because the path is destroyed through the redirect, and the BACK button is disabled. So, the whole thing is not only ineffective for bots, but openly hostile and time-wasting for humans. C.
