URL parameter names being changed by user agents
- by Mike Deck
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?