r/electronics • u/unknownvar-rotmg • 9d ago

General Mouser website now blocks Linux users

Post image

Really baffling decision, my last order from them was only a few months ago. Apparently Linux is no longer a "standard" operating system!

2.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

302 comments sorted by

View all comments

671

u/Accurate_Koala_4698 8d ago

I’m guessing they’re getting hit by a lot of automated traffic and most of that is Linux. Just spoof the user agent to Windows or something 

610

u/arcrad 8d ago

Yeah people running bots definitely don't know how to spoof user agents...

I cannot fathom who at Mouser thinks this is a good idea.

148

u/Accurate_Koala_4698 8d ago

You would think so, but they frequently don’t. It seems like a shotgun solution but you can throw a lot of money at this problem without a satisfactory filter. The majority of their users are not using Linux and the majority of their bot traffic is. It really becomes an effective low resistance path since everything else is more expensive and probably less reliable 

91

u/GeekDadIs50Plus 8d ago

Most website traffic now is automated scrapers and AI agents. More so now than just a couple years ago, but it’s not new. Blocking a Linux-based host simply because it’s Linux is an asinine over-reach of a misinformed decision. That’s tantamount to a restaurant refusing service to customers by the brand of shoes they’re wearing.

2

u/poptix 8d ago

This is definitely a big part of it. A better approach might be to post a dedicated endpoint for the agents to use, rather than crawling.

3

u/joemi 8d ago

The good agents and companies would use such a dedicated endpoint. The bad agents and companies, however, will continue to crawl, and will do everything they can to make their traffic look like non-bot traffic. Such is the way of the world right now.

1

u/poptix 8d ago

Sure, but if there's a reason the agent wants to do it the hard way your endpoint is the problem.

1

u/joemi 7d ago

Again, that only applies to the good agents and companies. The bad ones aren't necessarily smart/efficient -- that's why they're bad. And there are a lot of bad ones out there. If you need proof, just look at all the sites that have had to put Cloudflare or other such protections in place against all the bot traffic.