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I have a website which frequently posts data from client to server of about 3200 characters. I notice that some users of the site when visiting one page in particular will make a HEAD request with the longest of the posted values preceded by a /. This leads to a file name too long error and 403 response code.

Is there some reason why browsers would frequently make these erroneous HEAD requests? is there a way for me to redirect those requests to the appropriate POST request?

kasperd
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Jonathan Basile
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    What is the user-agent in the request? In my experience HEAD requests come from monitoring software most often. – kheld May 07 '15 at 15:17
  • Here are two examples: `403 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:25.3) Gecko/20150425 Firefox/31.9 PaleMoon/25.3.2"` and `"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0"` Their browsing patterns are at least plausibly human, but you can never be too sure – Jonathan Basile May 07 '15 at 15:27
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    Note that they have no referrer field present. Is that a common factor? – Cameron Kerr May 07 '15 at 15:59
  • Is there any single-sign-on sort of environment in play with this site? They often have very long URLs (although I've not seen them with a HEAD). – Cameron Kerr May 07 '15 at 16:01
  • You're correct - in all of the insatances that I've checked there was no referrer. I tried accessing the page myself by entering post data in the address bar and got through with no problem. Also - there's no sign in for the site. – Jonathan Basile May 07 '15 at 16:16

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