Following links to the BCRA Online Archive from ukcaving using Apple devices

[langcliffe]

I have noticed a peculiarity in the BCRA Online Caving access logs whereby devices running an Apple browser that follow a link to the BCRA Online Archive from ukcaving append "/favicon.ico" to the URL, which obviously returns error 404 "file not found". e.g.

IP address: 86.130.135.56
Referer: https://ukcaving.com/
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.1.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1
Request: https://archives.bcra.org.uk/archive.php?level=collection&collection=binns/favicon.ico

The originating IP addresses belong to valid domestic telecommunications suppliers, so it is unlikely to be a badly created request from a bot.

Has anyone encountered such a problem running Apple software?

 

[BigDyl]

Is this a one off or a reoccurring issue?

 

[langcliffe]

Is this a one off or a reoccurring issue?

It happens quite frequently. Unfortunately, I cannot test it myself, and so cannot establish whether it really is an issue. I was hoping that someone with an iPhone could check it out for me. If someone with an iPhone is happy to do so, maybe they can try testing using this link:

https://archives.bcra.org.uk/archive.php?level=image&collection=bsa&document=ES034&item=94

and letting me know what happens. It would also be useful if they could tell me the time they clicked the link.

It it works as one would expect, then there is no issue. If that is the case, then either the browser is making an invalid request for favicon.ico which is not important, or it's someone playing silly buggers, which is also not important. If it is a genuine problem, I can probably adjust such requests using .htaccess.

 

[ChrisB]

I've just dug out an old iPad Mini 4, and tested your link at 15.04. It loaded without a problem, in the same way as it does on my PC in Firefox. I would tell you the version of iOS and Safari but, not normally using Apple devices, I can't see where to find that information.

 

[BigDyl]

Tested it with an IPhone 12 at 15:30, loaded with no issues. Perhaps it’s an issue with the newest IOS version (v18) as I can see the request header has ‘IPhone OS 18_1_1’?

 

[langcliffe]

Thank you both! I can see both your requests, and they are being handled as I would expect them to be.

There are a number of requests around the same time requesting the invalid URL. With your evidence, I now suspect them to be bots using badly formed URLs, and spoofing the referer as 'ukcaving.com'.

Houston, we do NOT have a problem...