URL parameter names being changed by user agents

Posted by Mike Deck on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by Mike Deck
Published on 2012-06-22T20:15:55Z Indexed on 2012/06/22 21:26 UTC
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404

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url-parameters

In reviewing one of our site's web logs I'm seeing instances where we are returning a 404 to requests because we're expecting an id parameter to be sent, but instead we're seeing a di parameter.

The resource in question is an image but which image file actually gets served is dependent on the id parameter. The expected url is something like http://images.mysite.com/photo.gif?id=123&width=200&height=300

What I'm seeing in the logs is requests for http://images.mysite.com/photo.gif?di=123&width=200&height=300

The only case where we are seeing this on the id parameter.

It seems unlikely that this is due to a server side or JavaScript bug since it seems to be only effecting a small percentage of our traffic. We are seeing this across a wide variety of user agents (both mobile and desktop) and IPs. Has anyone else seen this? Is there a browser plugin or other software you're aware of that could be causing this, and if so is there a good way to work around the issue?

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