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Rate Limit Exceed


ice13-333

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Logging by hand is breaking the terms of use? What did I miss?

 

"by hand" means "using an automated tool" in snark, of which I am fluent.

 

At least it should be. Our records show that the user was throttled several times. This only happens if the user isn't looking at what they are doing, which generally means it is a bot. Regardless, read the message and slow down.

Edited by Jeremy
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Can you get the "Limit Exceeded" page for looking at geocaching too long? I was just browsing the map and opening caches to look at and got the message. I was bored and cheking out caches in an area I'm going to be visiting. Never had that problem before. I read the post and wasn't doing anything that it mentioned as far as I know. I was just opening caches from the google maps page. Guess I'll see if it happens again, once it lets me back on :sad:

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Can you get the "Limit Exceeded" page for looking at geocaching too long?
Only from your spouse. Not at all uncommon in that situation, but otherwise... no.

 

Not sure why that happened then. I've never had that happen before, so hopefully it was just a random occurence. My wife is still at work right now, so that wasn't the case :sad:

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I forgot to mention that I got the "Limit Exceeded" page right after I moved the map and the "Requesting Geocaches" thing came up in the middle. It never went away and just kept spinning. I think I hit the refresh button or back button and then got the message. Not sure if that would have caused the problem.

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I just got this message for the first time tonight. I have nothing running extra on my computer, am doing everything the same as I usually do but because I switched between logging a trackable to logging a find on a cache that I found that trackable in, I got the lovely screen and have been kept out for longer than I am patient enough to wait for.

I pay a premium membership fee and am not doing anything "illegal" and am annoyed that I can not finish logging today's finds, my coin drops or load the caches that I am going to look for tomorrow morning!

 

NOT PLEASED!

 

Edit

Come back 10 minutes later and I still am not allowed to log my finds! Still not pleased... I did not do anything wrong.

 

Further Edit....

almost 45 minutes later I am still not allowed in! And as I have already said I am not using "an automated tool" to do anything. It seems that security by gc.com has been increased too much that it is hindering the paid subscribers! I am still NOT PLEASED that I am not able to do my trackable drops, find logs or download what I am going to seek tomorrow!

I certainly hope that something is going to be done about this!

Edited by brendah
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Seems pretty clear there is a bug with this 'feature' from the above posts. It sounds like simply scrolling around the map can cause this. (lots of api hits to the db from scrolling it a lot? )

 

Though i can think of other ways.. For example, one common thing which might look like a bot to a 'limiter' that someone may do is quickly open a bunch of caches from a list in new tabs using shift -click.

 

Firefox also does 'pre-fetching' in some situations... though probably not quickly.

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1237 (am) our time...

I downloaded about fifteen caches (singly) and got a message that said, "WHOA, SLOW DOWN"

and stated the "hampsters noticed that I was hitting pages faster than is humanly possible."

 

Really ? I have dial up and only log caches one-at-a-time. And I'm a hunt 'n peck typer.

 

Now I can't set up any more for tomorrow.

The "WHOA" page stops me from looking at caches already done on my profile page also. Really wanted to look at one that we DNF today (the CO disabled it, seems, by the lines through it.)

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Btw. if you feed the text of that slow down message to google to you will notice they got blocked too. wouldn't a robots.txt be better for that job?

 

Greasemonkey Scripts don't obey robots.txt

 

If you are running any Greasemonkey scripts you can quickly hit the throttling code.

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Looks like it already let me back in after a couple minutes of waiting. Maybe it was just a glitch. I'll try to take it slower from now on :laughing:

 

If you wait a second (or a minute), it will let you back in. If you keep opening pages you can get locked out for a while longer than that.

 

GreaseMonkey scripts can hit the site too fast. shift-clicking on links to open tabs can also do it. We'll tweak throttling a bit to see if it clears up for most users and also block those bots who are hitting the site too fast.

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I forgot to mention that I got the "Limit Exceeded" page right after I moved the map and the "Requesting Geocaches" thing came up in the middle. It never went away and just kept spinning. I think I hit the refresh button or back button and then got the message. Not sure if that would have caused the problem.

 

I've tried scrolling as fast as possible and the page hasn't throttled me. every time you scroll it registers as a hit to our system.

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I forgot to mention that I got the "Limit Exceeded" page right after I moved the map and the "Requesting Geocaches" thing came up in the middle. It never went away and just kept spinning. I think I hit the refresh button or back button and then got the message. Not sure if that would have caused the problem.

 

I've tried scrolling as fast as possible and the page hasn't throttled me. every time you scroll it registers as a hit to our system.

 

I'm not sure what happened. It occurred right after the map "froze" with the "requesting geocaches" phrase stuck in the middle of the map. I wasn't sure if that was registering as several fast hits to the system or not. I haven't had it happen again, so it was probably just me clicking on the cache icons on the map too fast or scrolling too much.

 

I'm not using Greasemonkey (I think that is a firefox app). I've been using IE8. I haven't changed anything on my settings in a long time, so it shouldn't be that.

 

Thanks for all the quick responses to let us know your looking into it. I definately appreciate all the work you all put into the website and the hobby as whole :laughing:

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I'm not sure what happened. It occurred right after the map "froze" with the "requesting geocaches" phrase stuck in the middle of the map. I wasn't sure if that was registering as several fast hits to the system or not. I haven't had it happen again, so it was probably just me clicking on the cache icons on the map too fast or scrolling too much.

 

I'm not using Greasemonkey (I think that is a firefox app). I've been using IE8. I haven't changed anything on my settings in a long time, so it shouldn't be that.

 

Thanks. This is very helpful information. We'll likely have some false positives while we tweak the new system but we've already stopped some very nasty robots from hitting the site. In the meantime you should bask in your super human status.

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I'll find out what is going on with the throttling. I apologize to the OP for insinuating he was scraping the site.

 

I know a man who has a vibrant DVD business who allows anyone to copy his material. He does not copyright his material. People said he was dumb and would go broke. Last I heard he has over 30 employees! People want updated versions of his material. The free copying is free advertising for him. I hope ya get my drift here.

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I'll find out what is going on with the throttling. I apologize to the OP for insinuating he was scraping the site.

I hope ya get my drift here.

 

I do and I don't agree with ya.

 

That is fine, that is your right, but success can be found in multiple paths. Some paths make many enemies, some friends. Just saying that is all. I am happy with where you have brought geocaching. Now that I am done with a year of chemo and the snow is all gone here in NY I am looking forward to the sport part of the game! Happy hiking....

Edited by Frank Broughton
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I'll find out what is going on with the throttling. I apologize to the OP for insinuating he was scraping the site.

I hope ya get my drift here.

 

I do and I don't agree with ya.

 

That is fine, that is your right, but success can be found in multiple paths. Some paths make many enemies, some friends. Just saying that is all. I am happy with where you have brought geocaching. Now that I am done with a year of chemo and the snow is all gone here in NY I am looking forward to the sport part of the game! Happy hiking....

 

If I'm out in New York sometime I'd be happy to wax philosophical with you. Have fun out there!

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We raised the threshold for super human surfing. Continue to report in the forums if you have been shown the "Whoa!" message and let us know if you are running anything outside of general browsing.

 

Well, the hamsters to be have also awarded me the title of "Super Surfer". When do I get my plaque?

 

Seriously........I was on google map page showing cache icons. Clicking on icons to see cache title, owner and star ratings, to see if they'd be of any interest to me. I was gonna bookmark the ones I wanted to set up for a "run" next weekend.

 

Yupp, scrolled the map pretty fast (not much cache densitry in this part of michigan), and clicked on icons as they appeared. I did move from one to another pretty quickly, and occasionally opened the full cache page for a quick glance (opened in a new browser window), closed it, and returned to clicking on icons and scrolling the map.

 

Normal surfing tools/habits for me...........no accelerators, addons, enhancements, or special software. Going fast, ya, but I don't believe my speed could be confused with some automated search tactic. Heck, I'm not even paperless yet (the ol' "why change it if it ain't broke attitude"). Status quo keeps me up and running.........I don't have the time for all this "newfangled stuff", but do have the cache for printer toner and paper. Humm, maybe I should reconsider?

 

I was totally surprised to see the "Whoa" page, and, at first, thought my browser had been "kidnapped" or I had somehow got a virus.

 

Steve

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Happend to me today, this afternoon. Trying to log a series of caches, not using any add ons or anything just opening, logging and closing. Was locked out for about 45mins.

 

I finally got there in the end but I am not aiming to be super human and don't like the idea of been acused of steeling caches either. :laughing:

 

I too thought it was a computer virus or something funny with my computer. Only after asking the question on another forum was I pointed here for an answer and the log my problem.

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I'd like to remind posters in this thread who have seen the message, that it's been requested that you post what browser you are using and whether you have any add-ons or scripts in use. Also some browsers have built-in pre-fetch options; if you have enabled any such options, this would be a good thing to point out. (I know that Opera has such an option, but it's always struck me as too dangerous to enable.)

 

I know a man who has a vibrant DVD business who allows anyone to copy his material. ... The free copying is free advertising for him.

I don't know if it's been stated clearly, but my strong impression is that the main reason for throttling is to avoid performance degradation. If the site slows down because robots are hitting it too hard, we'll certainly complain and ask GS to do something about it. Which AFAIK is what this is all about.

 

Edward

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You seem proud of the fact that you are breaking the terms of use for our website. Bragging in Groundspeak's forums is not "recommended".

 

I´m sorry, it was not my intention to brag here. Just wondered about this message, because i never use a tool to log here or have any add-on to my browser... and after searching for this "message" - with no result - i started this thread to know, if anyone else had the same message. So sorry again, i think i have used the wrong words - but my english is not very good.

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"by hand" means "using an automated tool" in snark, of which I am fluent.

 

At least it should be. Our records show that the user was throttled several times. This only happens if the user isn't looking at what they are doing, which generally means it is a bot. Regardless, read the message and slow down.

 

That was not what i meaned with my words (my english is not very good) - i really log my finds or other things without any tool. I used two browser-windows to log the cache in the first and the trackables in the second one. Maybe that was the trigger for the rate limit exceed. After that, i refreshed the windows to see, if i´m allowed to make my other logs, but no chance to get in for 30 Minutes. My resume: To make nothing wrong in the future, i´ll now log anything in one window, to be not to fast...

 

edit: i use IE8...

Edited by ice13-333
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"by hand" means "using an automated tool" in snark, of which I am fluent.

 

At least it should be. Our records show that the user was throttled several times. This only happens if the user isn't looking at what they are doing, which generally means it is a bot. Regardless, read the message and slow down.

 

That was not what i meaned with my words (my english is not very good) - i really log my finds or other things without any tool. I used two browser-windows to log the cache in the first and the trackables in the second one. Maybe that was the trigger for the rate limit exceed. After that, i refreshed the windows to see, if i´m allowed to make my other logs, but no chance to get in for 30 Minutes. My resume: To make nothing wrong in the future, i´ll now log anything in one window, to be not to fast...

 

edit: i use IE8...

Several of us understood you perfectly well. I, for one, feel that you deserve more than the passing apology that you received. All I can say is that perhaps the staff was a bit tense with the release and the upcoming holiday. You very politely reported a bug and got slammed for it by those in the highest positions. You have taken it much better than I would have.
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IE7 with XP - and dial up.

I was using GSAK to load the caches to the gpsr singley from search nearest pages. Each time I clicked on "back" from the last cache loaded (to look at another cache to go for), I had to refresh (and retry) each and every time. This has been ongoing since the last "upgrade" on GC.com - always have to refresh when hitting the back button.

Not sure if that issue is the reason for the "whoa" pages I got yesterday.

Had to look up greasemonkey and bot to see what the heck they were and am sure I have neither.

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If you are running any Greasemonkey scripts you can quickly hit the throttling code.

With all due respects Jeremy, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm not aware of any public Greasemonkey scripts that hit the site at all. All of my scripts, and all of Prime Suspect's scripts, simply rearrange data that is already on the page.

 

I challenge you to show me a Greasemonkey script that "can quickly hit the throttling code."

 

All of the scripts that I and others have written do good and valuable things to improve the usability of the website. You should embrace them and not try to scare users away from them.

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Also some browsers have built-in pre-fetch options; if you have enabled any such options, this would be a good thing to point out. (I know that Opera has such an option, but it's always struck me as too dangerous to enable.)

I'm not aware of Opera's pre-fetching mechanism, but the one in Firefox will not pre-fetch any dynamic URL, which means anything with a ? question mark and parameters after it. Since pretty much the entire geocaching site uses dynamic URLs, pre-fetching will do nothing for you, and won't hurt you.

 

Think about it: the second link on any geocaching.com page is the one that logs you out. If pre-fetching was following every link, you'd be constantly getting logged out.

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At least 3 other cachers in my immediate area have been hit with this "Slow Down" page & pretty much banned for 15 minutes .... simply for looking at a map, or clicking on an icon. Some type of flood-control or throttling setting has been twisted WAY too aggresively.

 

FF browser, no automation, no greasemonkey, no scripts, just general surfing with my mouse & fingers. Never happened before tonight & now it's happened a least 3-4 times in just an hour to an hour & a half. Pretty much makes the site unusable for effective surfing.

 

Please crank this back down so as not to punish those of us who are doing nothing wrong.

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How do you use GSAK to load it to a gpsr via the search nearest page? I'm not familiar with this method.

 

-Raine

 

I suspect he is talking about clicking the 'download .loc file' button which appears next to each cache on the nearst cache lists. When clicked and opened, would open in GSAK. He'd then send taht to the GPSr.

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Not trying to sound difficult or belligerent, but this is ridiculous guys. I can understand for a NON paying member, but for a PREMIUM member, we shouldn't be forced to sit through 10-20 minute time-out punishments for not even doing anything wrong. I get to look at the site for maybe 15 minutes, then any touch of a button or link will do absolutely nothing but lead me to that same "Slow Down" page.

 

This was a VERY bad time to break the site, then leave us with something that is practically useless as-is. Please do this type thing early in the week from now on & at the beginning of the day. Having a long Easter weekend, I PLANNED on doing some extensive caching. But with that "Slow Down" page popping up every 10-15 minutes, there's no way even resembling easy & efficient to put together a group of the type caches I intended to do. I'm pretty much just stuck with grabbing whatever happens to be on the map when I finally get it loaded up again .... because it'll lock me out almost immediately if I try to do any searching or moving the map.

 

Nothing has changed here. This is the same computer/browser/software/etc., which I've successfully used for GC.com for months. Something in the newest update seriously broke the efficiency of the site. Please get this back to a working matter as quickly as possible. And HOPEFULLY, don't do this to paying premium members in the future.

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This was a VERY bad time to break the site, then leave us with something that is practically useless as-is. Please do this type thing early in the week from now on & at the beginning of the day. Having a long Easter weekend, I PLANNED on doing some extensive caching. But with that "Slow Down" page popping up every 10-15 minutes, there's no way even resembling easy & efficient to put together a group of the type caches I intended to do.

Hey Astro

Have you not noticed Groundspeak often finds "a VERY bad time to break the site", and then go off to enjoy their weekend. They have indicated there would be more focus on monitoring site performance/issues after updates, but we'll see how that works out over the long term. After reading your post I immediately thought back to the portion of a post by Nate I have included below. My immediate reaction to that had been WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? And sometimes the answer must be, THEY DON'T. It was important to get the new site efficiency code out LAST WEEKEND, and failing that it was then important to wait till NEXT WEEKEND.

 

Release Notes 4/1/10

The site will go down this afternoon (PDT), for the regular monthly release.

 

Apart from the bug fixes listed here, the development team has implemented a number of changes which we expect will improve performance and stability of the site. This being a holiday weekend in much of the world, it is important for us to get new code out in advance of what is expected to be a very busy weekend for Geocaching.com.

How long ago did Pete Seeger ask the question"When will they ever learn?"

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How do you use GSAK to load it to a gpsr via the search nearest page? I'm not familiar with this method.

 

-Raine

 

I suspect he is talking about clicking the 'download .loc file' button which appears next to each cache on the nearst cache lists. When clicked and opened, would open in GSAK. He'd then send taht to the GPSr.

 

Close. I click on the "GPX Exchange File" on the cache page. Guess it operates the same ?

The easiest way (for me) to put them in the GPSr, other than manually (was gonna say by hand, but apparently that's a bad thing .)

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I was getting hit with the hamster message yesterday as well.

 

* Running IE8.0.6001

* Factory install. No scripts; no add-ins other than Webex; plain vanilla as far as I am aware

* I was using GSAK for the logging with the following steps:

1) Type text in GSAK logs

2) Hit the "log cache" button. That does run a macro, but it is local I believe.

3) That opens up the browser to the log page for the cache.

4) Check the date, set status to found, copy in the log text, hit the submit buttion.

5) Go back to GSAK for the next cache. I usually close the browser window as well, but not always.

 

The really hilarious part of getting the message was that I was logging the 360 caches I did on a power run south of Las Vegas last weekend. With the error, it is taking me longer to log the caches than it did to do the caches!!!!

 

:lol:

 

I type fast, but give me a break. Even considering I was just putting "TFTC" on most of the logs, I still took time to put in a date and time stamp and cycle through the GSAK procedures. It had to be at least 45-90 seconds between cache logs. If GC thinks that is "super human" speed they need to hire some new engineers. My users at work (I manage IT teams at a network equipment company) would consider that slow for system response time for the user interface, let alone a bot type routine.

Edited by CKayaks
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Have you not noticed Groundspeak often finds "a VERY bad time to break the site", and then go off to enjoy their weekend.

 

Well, I can guarantee that we're not off enjoying our weekend. And we all agree that this was not an ideal time to upgrade the site, but it was also not an ideal time to sit back and watch the site and mobile apis become unresponsive as they have in Sundays past. We're in the proverbial "rock and a hard place" scenario.

 

In response to users who are reporting being temporarily suspended, we've loosened the settings a bit to let more people in. We have not yet been able to reproduce a scenario in our tests where we falsely identify super humans, so we're not able to identify what there is to fix. We'll be upgrading the site early next week to capture more info.

 

On the positive side, we've been able to identify numerous bots that have been heavily hitting our site and causing the significant site slowdowns you've experienced the last few weeks. For the last several hours, we've been seeing large traffic to the site and it has remained responsive. If we had not removed those bots, the site would certainly be at a crawl right now and the mobile apis would likely be unresponsive, given what we know from the last few weeks.

 

To those who have been intermittently blocked from the site due to false positives, know that I'm truly sorry and working feverishly to identify what could be causing this, even on this holiday. My wife is not very happy about it, and thus, it's a far stretch to say that I'm off enjoying my weekend.

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Thanks for trying to get it fixed. Try early on Monday's for flipping the switch on site updates. That usually prevents people from having to work over the weekend .... and prevents users from being slammed with bugs on the weekend.

 

But as far as this one, there's a very easy fix for it ..... DON'T THROTTLE PREMIUM MEMBERS !!! Bots don't typically pay.

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Looks like it already let me back in after a couple minutes of waiting. Maybe it was just a glitch. I'll try to take it slower from now on :lol:

 

If you wait a second (or a minute), it will let you back in. If you keep opening pages you can get locked out for a while longer than that.

 

GreaseMonkey scripts can hit the site too fast. shift-clicking on links to open tabs can also do it. We'll tweak throttling a bit to see if it clears up for most users and also block those bots who are hitting the site too fast.

 

It took an hour before it would let me in and I waited quite a long time before I tried again! More than "a second (or a minute)"!!! It is definitely something that needs to be fixed. I should not have been blocked out at all. All I was doing is switching between a trackable retrieval and logging the find on the cache that the trackable came from. Nothing high speed here!!!!! I live in the middle of nowhere!

 

I don't use Firefox, I don't have GreaseMonkey, I don't have anything like any of those. I don't haven anything different than I did when I started frequenting gc.com!! I use IE (it is completely uptodate), run with Windows Vista and am not a techie so I have no idea how to run anything else but.

 

I pay to use this site and expect to not be insulted by some message that I originally thought was a bug on my computer. If things don't change back to the way they used to be where I am not afraid of clicking between tasks or using the map feature, I will wonder if paying $30 (plus exchange) is worth my time and frustration!

Edited by brendah
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