JBVoices » Spamming the spammers

Spamming the spammers

Posted April 24th, 2007 by Jaybee

Spamming the spammers Ages ago I signed up for an interesting initiative called Project Honeypot. The idea was that you took a script which contained links to a page full of emails donated by kind hearted people who weren’t using the accounts. You placed this code in your site and left a link lying around so the spambots would find it and grab the email addresses. Honeypot then track them down and squidgyfy them.

This appealed to my sense of justice so I added them to all my sites, and my client sites, and got great satisfaction checking my stats on the Honeypot site. I’ve personally helped catch over 50 harvesters. OOOOOOOH the satisfaction.

PH have now started to do more spurred on by the success of things so far. So why am I telling you this? Well firstly because you might like to feel all warm and cuddly knowing you helped sock it to the baddies and secondly because their latest initiative is going after the comment spammers. Something close to your own heart I assume.

If you’re not aware, comment spammers crept up from the depths in the last few years. They are robots are running around the internet leaving their comments on feed back forms, blogs, and forums. The purpose is not only to drive traffic to the sites when people visiting the forums click the links, but also to increase search engine rank by increasing the number of back links to their site.

We turned the system on only a little over a week ago and already have caught more than 600 unique IPs engaged in comment spamming. We expect that number will dramatically increase over time. If you haven’t done so already, install a honey pot or add a QuickLink to help trap comment spammers.Project Honeypot

So here’s your chance. Nip over to Project Honeypot and give em hell.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Random Mutterings, Can Spam. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.

3 Responses to: “Spamming the spammers”

Jaybee responds:
Posted: April 26th, 2007 at 9:17 pm →

Update:

On Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 10:54am in a court in the Eastern District of Virginia, Project Honey Pot filed the largest anti-spam lawsuit ever. Seeking more than $1B in statutory damages, the suit was brought on behalf of our members. It targets a huge swath of spammers. If you’ve harvested email addresses or sent spam in the last two years, chances are you’re on our radar screen and we’re coming after you.

As some of you may have seen, the press coverage of this major announcement has already begun. We will post a link to the complaint here as soon as it is available.

This is, of course, only one step in a long journey to make the Internet a better place. But it’s an especially important step because it was not brought by a single ISP or regional prosecutor. This suit was brought by you: the volunteer members of Project Honey Pot representing more than 100 countries around the world. It was brought, in effect, by the Internet community. And, as a community, we are sick and tired of this crap and it’s time for it to stop.

This suit would not be possible without your help. It is you who take the time to install honey pot pages, donate MX records, and share the data they generate with us. Thank you all. Please keep up the great work.Project Honeypot
JBVoices » Ask Auntie Jaybee responds:
Posted: May 10th, 2007 at 6:32 pm →

[…] has a valid mark. There are moves afoot to stop these people dead in their tracks, see my post on Spamming the Spammers, which probably means that I’m about to lose a really good source of […]
Jaybee responds:
Posted: December 17th, 2007 at 3:21 pm →

Well there’s a surprise. I’ve just had comment from a comment spammer saying he doesn’t agree with me.

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Breezing the shoot. Random mutterings of a Web Developer. » Spamming the spammers

Spamming the spammers

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JBVoices Breezing the shoot. Random mutterings of a Web Developer. » Spamming the spammers

Spamming the spammers

3 Responses to: “Spamming the spammers”

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Breezing the shoot. Random mutterings of a Web Developer. » Spamming the spammers