Does something automatically download attachments?

[carlsson]

Pretty much every time I post something that contains an attachment, whether it is source code, binary file or something else, I note that within seconds after I posted it, the forum shows there has been 1 download already. For a while I suspected some lurkers or bots that crawl the forum constantly looking for things to download but it seems so immediate that I wonder if that is part of how the forum software works, that once a file has been uploaded to the forum, the download counter shortly after is set to 1?

[Albert]

No, the download counter for attachments should be zero unless they are explicitly clicked on.  There are certainly bots that crawl the forum constantly (such as Google), and it's likely that the bots are hitting the attachment links.

 

 ..Al

[carlsson]

Hm, I just observed that attachments I add when posting a message almost instantly gets 1 download on them, but if I edit the message within the time slot and add a second attachment, it doesn't get an instant download. Possibly the bots are scouting for new messages all the time, so any content changed in an existing message will not be observed by those.

[Albert]

Yes, it's generally the search engine bots, they are pretty good at scooping up new posts in short order.

 

 ..Al