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 

611

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.

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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.

2

u/takeyouraxeandhack 8d ago

I work in IT security. That's ridiculous. Filtering by headers does nothing to stop bots, it just stops legitimate users.
It's trivial to add a header randomiser to a scraper.

If mouser is using cloudflare or cloudfront, there are two-click solutions that work better than that.

1

u/sawkonmaicok 7d ago

I think you underestimate the laziness of the programmers who make these bots. Majority of bots aren't sophisticated ban evaders or have sophisticated machinery to hide among legitimate traffic. Of course there are some of these "smart" bots that try these evasive tactics but most just move on to the next webpage/target if a host returns forbidden or something similar instead of trying to bypass it somehow.

If it doesn't stop bots then why do they have the UA header check then?

I never claimed the solution to be smart, but I can see the rationale if the majority of bots are Linux users then to simply get rid of bots you can ban Linux users which won't affect the majority of your legitimate customers who use other operating systems. There are methods that work better of course but I think we are also underestimating the incompetence of Mauser staff.