How to beat AVG's fake traffic spew

Is this really as an important issue as The Register is making it out to be? So the user fetches your page without looking at it. That's how the web works. Bandwidth, at least with my host, is nearly free... so who cares. Your ads and javascript-based analytics aren't being hit, so it shouldn't be affecting your monetarily. And even if it is, this is how the web works. Clients can do whatever they want. They can scan your page for malware, they can not display it, or they can download it over and over for no reason.

Personally, I use the web server hits to let me know what people are interested in. I don't burden my users with javascript analytics.<p>For the moment I can just drop all the data from IE6 users, but if AVG is serious about this they will have to start randomizing their signature or it won't work.<p>AVG is a robot. They should use the robot exclusion protocol and clearly identify themselves in their user agent string.