Thousands of weird 404 clicks from Microsoft IPs

M

mwizz98

Member
Every time I send a campaign to any of my lists, I get thousands of weird 404 clicks. They all come from Microsoft IPs, I assume they're Microsoft mail servers or spam filters or something like that. My lists are clean, so it's odd.

Anyway, all the 404 clicks are always formatted the same way and look like this:

example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZTUxNDk0Yz
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZmUwZWNmZm
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZWRlM2Q2ZW
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZTEwYTMzNz
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZjA1NjRmOT
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/OWI1YTgwYm
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/YTY2MmQ5Ym
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZWRlM2Q2ZW

They don't come from a single user, but many users. And they are not truncated links. I can't figure out what they're trying to do.

Anyone ever seen this or is able to figure out what causes it?

Thanks
 
I turned on Smart Tracking, very neat feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't help with my 404 errors. I still get thousands of unexplainable 404 clicks from Microsoft IPs in the format specified above when I send out a campaign. In the chart below you can see the surge in 404 errors because they're obviously looking for URLs that don't exist. And they're always in that specific format. If you have any idea what they might be, please let me know.

errors-mw.JPG
 
mwizz98 said:
example.com/index.php/campaigns/<valid-campaign-id>/track-url/<valid-user-id/ZTUxNDk0Yz
Click to expand...
That is not a valid url, it is truncated, and from here comes the 404. The hash, should have 40 chars. There is nothing the smart tracking can do if the url accessed is not correct.

Cosmin
 
I thought they were truncated URLs too at first, but they aren't. The pattern they follow does not match the hash that should be there or even part of it, I checked all the valid links to make sure. The hash that should be there gets replaced with the hash posted above, which is weird. They are just so oddly specific and always follow their own pattern.

I was wondering if other people encountered the same problem or if anyone could figure out what they mean. There are thousands of those errors every time, all from Microsoft IPs, I can't be the only one getting them.
 
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