As you are probably aware, Microsoft will finally end all support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014, nearly 13 years after the operating system was first released. While mainstream support for Windows XP and Server 2003 ended back in 2010, these OSes have been on extended life support since then.
(Windows Server 2003 and Server 2003 R2 reach end of life on July 14, 2015.)
It was a hell of a ride. Nearly everyone who has ever touched a computer has gotten to know Windows XP, with all its faults, and some people even grew to love it. But as with all things in computing, the time eventually comes to move on.
If you’re a home user running Windows XP, your mainstream support ended in 2010; you should have upgraded already, as your level of support is limited to receiving the updates that Microsoft still prepares for business users. Small businesses and enterprises should already be executing their migration plans in order to have completely eliminated Windows XP from their networks by 2014 and Server 2003 by 2015. Though I know from experience that some businesses will, against all good sense, keep a few of them around practically forever. The consequences of this irresponsible behavior are on them.
Effective immediately this is Bad Behavior’s policy with respect to Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2.
Bad Behavior will not be supported when run on any web server on Windows XP, regardless of whether the end of life date has passed. Bad Behavior will not be supported when run on any web server on Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2 after their end of life date.
Bad Behavior will block any request if it can be reliably determined that it came from a system which does not have the latest available service pack and security updates. This takes effect immediately and applies to all versions of Windows. In particular, this means that requests claiming to be from Internet Explorer 7 and all prior versions may be blocked; all of these operating systems should already have Internet Explorer 8 or a third party web browser.
Bad Behavior will not block requests claiming to be from these operating systems outright, as is currently done with Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95 and Windows 3.1; however, this may change in the future and without prior notice.
Following their respective end of life dates, these operating systems will not automatically be presumed to be legitimate by Bad Behavior. If a change needs to be made to Bad Behavior to prevent new spam or malicious activity and that has the effect of blocking an end-of-life operating system, no special accommodation will be made for the end-of-life operating system.
Requests which are blocked due to running an end-of-life operating system will receive special instructions to this effect, so that they know they need to upgrade their operating system.
These policies are designed to strike a careful balance between preserving the security of your web site and allowing access from your legitimate visitors in all reasonable circumstances. It is less and less reasonable every day to permit requests claiming to be from Windows XP, and will be much less so after its end of life date passes. Therefore we will only guarantee to allow it while it is still a vendor supported operating system; after that time, since users are expected to have already upgraded, the guarantee becomes void, and while it may even be a few years after that, all such requests will eventually be blocked.