A question to People who look at their server logs

[tannim]

Short -
Has anybody noticed connections resolving into something like 74.86.244.72-static.reverse.softlayer.com connecting to their files and downloading them?

Long -
I have a server for sharing pictures and stories I make with friends. I give them a direct link to the files through IM services. Relatively recently, started about 2009, I found that a second connection would download the files from the links I send to people.

The connections always resolve to ***.***.***.***-static.reverse.softlayer.com with the * obviously being an IP address like "74.86.244.72-static.reverse.softlayer.com".

The current user agent it uses is "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)" I have no idea if that's a bot or not.

Not EVERY person I send to results in softlayer downloading the linked file. Sometimes it downloads the file before they get to, sometimes it downloads the file after, sometimes it will even hit the file hours after I sent the link to them.

The type of file doesn't matter. JPG, TXT, even multi-meg AVI.

These connections are NOT from yahoo's image preview and it happens to any IM service. It doesn't appear to be anything on MY side as I can send to many people and go for days without a hit, but some people, especially europeans it seems, have it hit a lot. People in the states have it happen to though.

I have blacklisted/forbidden softlayer IPs when I see them and when a new one tries to steal the files.

Any idea what it is? searching yields little other than that softlayer is a server farm.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, it IS 4:40 am.

[rudel_ic]

You can contact SoftLayer and try to resolve this.