My weekly usage report is very high for last week! There are nearly 300 downloads! I’m used to seeing a dozen and sometimes more; but not this many! Looking at the list almost all of them were on a single day, user Stu, purpose Analysis. They are all in alphabetical order from AB Dra to YZ Cnc. It is hard to imagine a student typing all this in as a request so its made be wonder if this is an AI learning activity some how grabbing data!
Anyone else seen such activity?
Bill Goff
GFB
Hi Bill, I have a similar Usage report from the AAVSO. I was also wondering how this happened.
Josch
A boatload of downloads for me as well including download of one star where I contributed a single point. It looks like either a bot or someone downloading every star in the database somehow.
-Walt
Couldn’t it have been a large summer AST-101 class where each student downloaded a couple stars that would add up fast! That is my theory. We need astronomer Sherlock Holmes working this problem… could have been an AI bot perhaps. 
I note that today the WebObs 2.0 search/download page has disappeared.
Tom
Greetings,
Over the last two years we’ve seen a significant increase in bot traffic on our website. Most of the bots identify themselves and abide by our rules listed in robots.txt; however, there are many bad actors.
Looking through the logs, there was a significant number of downloads from the WebObs 1.0 application on the 9th which were labeled student, but no other information was provided. Looking at the download patterns, this was almost certainly a bot. The new WebObs 2.0 application allows for a certain number of downloads without authentication, but requires an AAVSO account thereafter.
Also, to correct the comment from @tcalderw, the WebObs 2.0 upload, download, and search functions are all still online.
Brian
No Brian, WebOb 2.0 search/download really did disappear at least for a while. I went to Download Photometry and was taken directly to the WebObs 1.0 page.
If I directly entered the URL aavso.org/webobs I was presented with a red banner that suggested I use the new WebObs for data submission but lacked prior suggestions for 2.0 search and download. The WebObs 1.0 interface for search was listed among the available (clickable) options - in an oddly different color from the usual black.
Tom
CORRECTION: the different colored option was for the new “submit” function in webobs 2.0.
I’m really confused - I thought that the WebObs 1.0 download interface had been disabled but I used it successfully.
I’ve noticed this pattern of student downloads for years - at the end of each semester. I assume for final projects. But it does seem to have increased this year. Maybe AI is causing it either by bringing in more students or doing downloads on their own.