Bad Behavior 2.0.43 (stable) and 2.1.12 (development) have been released. For 2.0 users, this is a security release and all users should upgrade as soon as possible. For 2.1 users, this is a maintenance release and upgrading as soon as possible is recommended.
Please note: The 2.0 series of Bad Behavior is receiving limited updates, including unblocks, bug fixes and security fixes only. Future development is taking place in the 2.1 development tree.
Who should upgrade?
All users of the 2.0 series should upgrade to prevent leakage of information about your server to spammers and malicious bots.
All users should upgrade to ensure that their placement in the Google search engine remains intact.
What’s new?
New in this release (since 2.0.42 and 2.1.11):
- The 2.0.42 release, and possibly older releases, inadvertently omitted a message intended to be displayed to spammers pretending to be the Yahoo! search engine. Because of this, in non-default server configurations, a PHP notice could appear to the spammer which leaked information about the server. This message has been reinserted and the issue fixed.
- Google is now operating a new IP address range in China, from which it is crawling some Web requests. Interestingly, it is crawling all countries from this Chinese address range. Bad Behavior is now aware of this address range and will no longer block requests from Google which originate in China.
What’s coming?
I’m currently preparing to release the next major stable release of Bad Behavior, version 2.2. This release is sufficiently different that anyone maintaining a port needs to update their port to handle the new features immediately (such changes are backward compatible if implemented properly). Ports which are currently feature-complete on 2.1 will not need updating for 2.2 as the API is now stable.
After that, the next development branch will target version 3.0. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a complete ground-up rewrite, so anyone maintaining a port will need to track development and be prepared to completely rewrite their ports. It’s going to be a week or two at least before I have alpha code to share, but you will want to make time for it, because there will also be important changes in the way Bad Behavior is distributed. I hope to have 3.0 in beta later this month, and a general release by the end of May.
For our enterprise users who require long-term support, the 2.0 branch will continue to receive long-term support through June 30, 2012, and the 2.2 branch (coming shortly) will be fully supported until the 3.0 release, and then receive long-term support through June 30, 2014.
Download
Download the latest release of Bad Behavior now!
Support
I can only spend time on improving Bad Behavior when incoming donations cover the cost of my time. Otherwise I have to engage in paying work to keep food on my table.
I happen to like giving spammers a hard time, and it’s frustrating that I don’t get to spend enough time on it. You can help me make Bad Behavior even better by making your most generous donation for any amount. (BTW, I fixed all the broken donation links, I think. If you find any other broken ones, let me know!)
Thank you again for supporting Bad Behavior development!
Bad Behavior 2.0.42 (stable) and 2.1.11 (development) have been released. This is a maintenance release recommended for all users.
Please note: The 2.0 series of Bad Behavior is receiving limited updates, including unblocks, bug fixes and security fixes only. Future development is taking place in the 2.1 development tree.
Who should upgrade?
Users with a significant amount of traffic from mobile devices should upgrade to ensure that requests from older and “dumb” mobile phones are screened properly.
What’s new?
New in this release (since 2.0.41 and 2.1.10):
- Google operates a proxy server for “feature phones” (dumb mobile phones; perhaps should be called feature limited) with limited Web browsers which reformats web pages into a simpler format for viewing on such phones. While it is now rarely used, requests from this proxy server, known as Google Wireless Transcoder, were being treated as search engine requests (and denied for not being a search engine). This issue has been fixed.
- Our new bug tracking system is online. If you find a bug in Bad Behavior, please submit it there. This will help me keep track of outstanding issues and ensure that I can get them resolved in a timely manner without losing track of them in my massive inbox.
What’s coming?
I’m currently preparing to release the next major stable release of Bad Behavior, version 2.2. This release is sufficiently different that anyone maintaining a port needs to update their port to handle the new features immediately (such changes are backward compatible if implemented properly).
After that, the next development branch will target version 3.0. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a complete ground-up rewrite, so anyone maintaining a port will need to track development and be prepared to completely rewrite their ports. It’s going to be a week or two at least before I have alpha code to share, but you will want to make time for it, because there will also be important changes in the way Bad Behavior is distributed. I hope to have 3.0 in beta within the next month, and a general release by the end of May.
For our enterprise users who require long-term support, the 2.0 branch will continue to receive long-term support through June 30, 2012, and the 2.2 branch (coming shortly) will be fully supported until the 3.0 release, and then receive long-term support through June 30, 2014.
Download
Download the latest release of Bad Behavior now!
Support
I can only spend time on improving Bad Behavior when incoming donations cover the cost of my time. Otherwise I have to engage in paying work to keep food on my table.
I happen to like giving spammers a hard time, and it’s frustrating that I don’t get to spend enough time on it. You can help me make Bad Behavior even better by making your most generous contribution for any amount. (BTW, I fixed all the broken donation links, I think. If you find any other broken ones, let me know!)
Thank you again for supporting Bad Behavior development!
Due to a bug in Google Desktop, Bad Behavior is blocking access to it when it tries to download users’ RSS feeds. I’ve sent a message to Google (though I don’t really expect much to happen) and I’ll see if I can have a workaround in place shortly.
Affected users will see “Web Clip Error: Unknown error” in the Google Desktop.
FeedBurner users who use the FeedBurner .htaccess redirects are not affected by this issue. (And since I’m one of them, I never noticed.)
I have a ticket [#32426362] from Google for this issue. If you are seeing this, you can contact desktop-feedback@google.com and place the ticket number, with the brackets, in the subject line, and let them know you are adversely affected by this issue. Also run the program located at http://desktop.google.com/DiagnoseGoogleDesktop.exe and include the diagnostic output that it gives in your message.