RE: Spider Activity Reports from Blackwell Synergy

["Gillingham Emily" <Emily.Gillingham@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com>]

I wanted to follow-up on the messages highlighting the recent
increase in blocking activity from Blackwell Synergy. We are
currently investigating the possible causes of this increase as a
high priority and do apologize for the inconveniences this is
causing our library customers.

Blackwell Synergy's IP blocking mechanism is triggered when the
system detects unusual activity that is typical of illegal web
crawling robots. These measurements were put in place to detect
abuse and to assist librarians in securing their institution's
network from unauthorized access.=A0 However, we do recognize that
there is a problem with the increased IP blocking activity
currently.

As well as investigating this increased blocking activity, we are
also planning to add additional information to the IP block email
messages that are sent to site administrators.  These currently
include the time of the block and the IPs affected and will soon
also include the reason for the block and advise whether it will
be automatically unblocked after two hours, or whether the
administrator needs to contact Blackwell to have the IP address
unblocked.=A0 Additionally, the administrator is always free to
contact us to obtain our web logs for their IP ranges.

If you have any questions or comments about IP blocking please do
contact me directly at the email below.  If you would like any
further assistance with unblocking your blocked IPs or more
technical help, please send an email to Sean Fallon at
customerservices@blackwellpublishing.com.  We will respond to
your query as soon as possible.

Best wishes,
Emily
____________

Emily Gillingham
Library Marketing and Communications Manager
Blackwell Publishing
9600 Garsington Road
Oxford OX4 2DQ
UK
Tel: +44 1865 476425
Fax: +44 1865 471425
Email: emily.gillingham@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
---2071850956-772030173-1149214636=:5890--