Got sent to URL with "overusingIPswillbebanned" in it

[OfficeLinebacker]

Hi, when I logged in to my laptop just now, a web page popped up with the URL http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fah ... ed?p=10450. There was a text box that said "Project Number:" and when I typed it in, there was no submit button or anything so I hit return.

Needless to say, I'm very worried. Does anyone know what this means?

Thanks.

[bruce]

At one time, some scripts were written that collecte FAH data on lots of people every time the stats were updated to generate detailed reports. These scripts ran automatically at regular intervals whether anybody ever looked at the results or not and put considrable load on the servers. FAH established a policy that they would publish downloadable flat files which could be used by the 3rd party stats sites and started eforcing the policy that got documented into that URL.

If you're doing occasional manual queries for your own use, there's othing to worry about.

[OfficeLinebacker]

I don't do any queries whatsoever, that I know of. I visit folding.extremeoverclocking.com every day, though. Would that do it?

[bruce]

Nope. Stanford is happy if you use their websites but they're also happy for the 3rd party stats sites that take a lot of the load off their stats database by downloading the flat files and then distributing the information to people like you.

The project descriptions are in a database on the same server as the official stats so they ended up with the same name in the URL, but I don't think there's any danger of the total number of queries will ever get high enough to disturb the server performance again.

[Jesse_V]

As Bruce said, it's just to help keep people from making scripts that flood their servers with queries. The URL is just there to make that clear. Thus, generally speaking, there's no reason to be concerned about this. I wouldn't worry about it.

[OfficeLinebacker]

Thank goodness. Appreciate the answers.

[TheWolf]

Sounds like you had v7 open in the desktop and didn't realize you had clicked or hit enter as you login
turns out the the pointer was on the link of the project you are working in the v7 client and was like
clicking a web link in a post there for it carried you to that page. This has happen to me a few times when waking up my PC.
Its nothing to worry about.

[OfficeLinebacker]

Sounds like you had v7 open in the desktop and didn't realize you had clicked or hit enter as you login
turns out the the pointer was on the link of the project you are working in the v7 client and was like
clicking a web link in a post there for it carried you to that page. This has happen to me a few times when waking up my PC.
Its nothing to worry about.

Yeah, exactly, I must have clicked on it without realizing it. It seemed like the web page automatically popped up when I logged in which made it scarier.