Fight back against spammers (Full Version)

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TJolly -> Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 13:16:38)

Apologies if people are already aware of this:

quote:

WWW Robots (also called wanderers, spiders, crawlers, or bots) are programs that crawl the Web continually retrieving linked pages. When a spammer's bot visits your website, blog, forum, etc, all pages and sites linked to it will be searched looking for email addresses.
Now you can fight back against their robots!


Continued here:


Spampoison




BobbyDouglas -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 13:35:44)

There are two drawbacks to this:
1) The link to the page always contains spampoison, which could easily be a flag for spam bots to NOT visit the link
2) What happens when a spammer e-mails those addresses? They are put into a database saying they are a spammer? If so, how does that information get relayed to the proper people to ensure the spammers are blacklisted? Would spampoison even be considered an accurate source and people would listen to them?

The idea is great, but I'd rather implement Project Honeypot



Larry M. -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 14:06:39)

quote:

The idea is great, but I'd rather implement Project Honeypot


Bobby,

I signed-up for this but it appears to be aimed at Network Administrators. Can (should) I add honey pot to my sites and if so, how do I add scripting language when all they offer is server side PHP, ASP, Perl, mod_perl, ColdFusion, Python, or Movable Type, not HTML?

I'm just getting killed by SPAM [:@] Is there anyway a host can install CAPCHA or the equivilant on their Squirrel eMail Server? If not, can you recommend a CAPCHA-like software program so I can [:(] implement it on every page with an email address on it?

Thanks!



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 14:53:24)

Larry,

The first step is to make sure you are not advertising your e-mails anywhere. If they are displayed online, then make sure you use some sort of e-mail address encryption type technique to have them hidden from bots (you can use an image for the e-mail addresses as well to hide them).

The second step is up to your host. Your host needs to do what they can to reduce spam. If your host can't help, look for another host that has the ability to make a difference.

I used to get spammed quite a bit every day, after implementing the e-mail address encryption technique, spam dropped significantly after a couple weeks. A couple months ago we rolled out with a really complex anti-spam setup that has reduced my daily spam from about 20 per day, to 0 per day. I average about 2 spam messages a week now.

I'll have to look at the Project Honeypot options later and find out what you can do now.



Larry M. -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 15:17:45)

quote:

The second step is up to your host. Your host needs to do what they can to reduce spam. If your host can't help, look for another host that has the ability to make a difference


Bobby,

That would be Tom. I'll let him know right away - SPAM is in the hundreds daily and increasing [:@]

quote:

then make sure you use some sort of e-mail address encryption type technique to have them hidden from bots


Seems like I tried this or something like this a few months ago but FrontPage could't recognize the script. I'll give it another go and let you know. Something has to change - in a zealous attempt to "toogle" and "delete" SPAM from the server, I've inadvertantly deleted legitimate business messages [:'(] Must be a better way [>:]



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 16:36:04)

If you don't end up in the spot where you want to be, send me a message and I'll go ahead and provide you with free e-mail hosting for a month to see if we might be able to do anything better.

As far as project honeypot goes, you need to create an account, and then somewhere in the account will be a link that you can display on your website to grab the spammers.

This will not decrease your spam, but it will help the project overall. If you are not familiar with what project honeypot is, you should read their about us page.



caz -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 20:08:19)

Larry I have used an email obfuscator using mixed code from http://www.seowebsitepromotion.com/obfuscate_email.asp and the spam from sites has dropped off markedly. I also use Mike Cherim's form where possible because the little b*s spam through forms too if they can.[:@]

As Bobby said I have signed up one major site to Project Honeypot, principally because it was targetted some time ago and it really ticked me off, so I thought that this was the best way for me to get back at them all. It doesn't do to annoy a Cheshire cat. [:D]



Larry M. -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/1/2007 20:50:38)

quote:

I have signed up one major site to Project Honeypot


caz,

My major (commercially sucessful) site is on a UNIX server and Project Honeypot only offers server-side scripts, no HTML. I'd like to "get back" too, but is there a way?



TJolly -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/2/2007 5:27:53)

Bobby

The only reason I posted the link was because one of the main security websites uses spampoison on its own website. Spampoison also says this:

quote:

These links will redirect email harvesting bots to trap sites that will feed it with an almost infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses, mostly on known spammer owned domains! This will render their harvested lists practically useless and of no commercial value.



caz -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/2/2007 8:09:24)

Larry, I don't have the ability to install my own honey pot on the server either, so I have added a "Quicklink" on the contacts page. This is from their FAQ's

quote:

I don't have the ability to install software on my site, but I still want to help?
No problem. While we especially value every honey pot that is installed, we know that many people who want to help run sites on services that do not allow the installation of software (e.g., Blogger, Typepad, Facebook, etc.). You can still help by including QuickLinks to others users' existing honey pots. To learn more, see the QuickLinks FAQ below.


It could be that the harvestors recognise the term "honey pot" and maybe they just keep away. [:D]





Thomas Brunt -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/2/2007 16:40:45)

Larry,

I just checked your the control panel, and server side spam filtering was not enabled. Not sure why that is. You have been with me a long time, and I guess I didn't have that as part of my standard setup when you signed up.

I have enabled that. It won't cure your problem, but my experience has been that it will help a good bit. I left a voicemail for you. Please give me a call tomorrow morning if you can.

I'm sure we can get this issue under control.

t



Larry M. -> RE: Fight back against spammers (8/2/2007 17:34:32)

Tom,

I'll be in touch.

Thanks, as usual [&:]



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