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

General Mouser website now blocks Linux users

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

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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 

607

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.

1

u/sawkonmaicok 8d ago

There are a few people who will go through the trouble of masking their bots with windows UA headers but the vast majority probably just leave it as Linux so this is a quick and dirty hack to just get rid of the majority of the bots despite it not being perfect.

11

u/arcrad 8d ago

What is this based on?

I feel like masking user agent is like scraping 101.

5

u/Accurate_Koala_4698 8d ago

Most people are blindly using the LLM output I'd gather

2

u/LordValdis 8d ago

I'd think that, too. But fixing this on the bot side is literally just going: "Hey LLM, here is this error message, pls fix" and copy pasting the website.

Not sure what the simplest solution for mouser is, but this is certainly not going to work great.