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Re: Interesting spamming tool: a robot to grab e-mail addresses


At 16:30 30/03/98 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>Simon Wilkinson writes:
>>>> Bull's Eye Gold is the PREMIER email address collection tool.
>[...]
>> 
>> Here's an idea (presuming it ignores robots.txt files, and forges its
>> User-Agent to look like a popular browser) Use wpoison (or similar) to
>> construct an infinitely deep area of your web tree. List this area in
>> your robots.txt file.
>> 
>> If you see more than (x) hits to this area in a certain time from a
>> certain IP address then set up access control measures to block that
>> IP address from accessing your server. Perhaps return a message
>> telling them why this is happened, and how to have their access
>> re-enabled. You could do all of this automatically, so the admin
>> wouldn't have to do anything about it.
>
>If the scanner was run by a user of an ISP which allocated addresses
>dynamically then you'd end up blocking people who had done you no
>harm.  Which would be bad.
>
>Better to pollute address lists with long lists of undeliverable
>addresses, IMHO.
>
>ttfn/rjk

Okay, so we all add pages of duff addresses to really screw up his nasty
spider ... so who gets all the bounces? Unlikely it's the originator,
unless he/she is intensely stupid. 

Just curious that's all.

Paul




----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Paul Rattray                           
Technical Services Manager, TALiSMAN, Tel: 0131-451 3279 Institute for Computer Based Learning, Fax: 0131-451 3283 Heriot-Watt University, http://www.talisman.hw.ac.uk Edinburgh, EH14 4AS Discussions at TALiSMAN-forum@localhost PGP public key available on request.

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