----- Forwarded message from Ben Okopnik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) From: Ben Okopnik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:03:36 -0400 To: The Answer Gang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [TAG] 2-cent Tip: Poisoning the spammers
I saw a web page the other day, talking about a cute idea: since the spammers are always trawling the Net for links and email addresses, why not give them some nice ones? For a certain value of "nice", that is... However, when I looked at the implementation of this idea, the author had put a "badgeware" restriction on using it - not something I could see doing - so I wrote a version of it from scratch, with a few refinements. Take a look: http://okopnik.com/cgi-bin/poison.cgi A randomly-generated page, with lots of links and addresses - with the links all pointing back to the script itself (somewhat obscured, so they don't look exactly the same) so the spammers can harvest even more of these addresses. Mmm, yummy! The addresses are made up of a random string "at" a domain made up of several random words joined together with a random TLD. There is some tiny chance of it matching a real address, but the probability is pretty low. If you want to download this gadget, it's available at http://okopnik.com/misc/poison.cgi.txt (and, once the next issue of LG comes out, at 'http://linuxgazette.net/151/misc/lg/poison.cgi.txt'.) I suggest renaming it to something else :), and linking to it - the link doesn't have to be visible [1] - from a few of your real webpages. If enough people started doing this, life would become a lot more pleasant. Well, not for spammers, but that's the whole point... [1] '<a href="poison.cgi" border="0"> </a>' at the end of a page should be invisible but still serve the purpose. -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * +-+--------------------------------------------------------------------+-+ You've asked a question of The Answer Gang, so you've been sent the reply directly as a courtesy. The TAG list has also been copied. Please send all replies to [EMAIL PROTECTED], so that we can help our other readers by publishing the exchange in our monthly Web magazine: Linux Gazette (http://linuxgazette.net/) +-+--------------------------------------------------------------------+-+ _______________________________________________ TAG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.linuxgazette.net/mailman/listinfo/tag ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Chris. ====== "One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted." -- Thomas B. Reed -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]