Spambot Beware

Harassment of Spambots

(This is a part of the Spambot Beware site)

This page explains some tricks you can use to actively harass spambots. Be sure to read the section about luring spambots in first.

Programs:

• Infinospam
• Spamthis
• Shovel

Infinospam

A program that generates infinite numbers of false email addresses

This program generates false email pages for a spambot to pick up. Although the program is adjustable, some words of warning are in order:

Always use a random, yet false, email address.

The domain part of the address should be unreachable. Don't just add a "nospam" or somethinglike that. This program starts with a random string and then adds a random number of random letters to create a unique domain name that is extremely unlikely to ever be used. By using random domains and random usernames, many, many emails can be generated. It's not truly infinite, but the program as it is written will generate approximately 26^49 email addresses. (Not infinity, but larger than anything a spambot can handle).

Watch your resources

These programs can suck up resources, especially if hit by multiple spambots (or one that is spawning). Always add a sleep command or two. Consider setting a limit on the number of pages generated as well.

Here's the program, as well as some other contributions:

• View Infinospam in action
• Source code for Infinospam
• Updated version, courtesy of Rudy Rucker, Jr.
• A php version, written by Harold Hallikainen
• A javascript version, written by David Merriman
• A similar program in action, by spamhelp.org
• Spambothoney, a program using PHP and MySQL, written by Daniel Hahler
• SpamBot Poison program
• bot-trap - A Bad Web-Robot Blocker
• spider-trap.de

Spamthis

A program that gives spambots some choice email

"Spamthis"is a program that generates some very interesting email addresses. In fact, it gives the spambot the addresses that the spammer will want least to use. The theory is that the spammer is going to run the spambot from the same dialup that is used to send the spam from. In most cases, these two activities (gathering email and sending spam) are done at the same time anyway.

Some spambots are smart enough to filter out any "local" email addresses - so we also add in some select dotted decimal emails as well. :)

• View Spamthis in action Look closely at the emails generated.
• Source code for Spamthis

Shovel

A program to dump junk to a spambot

This is a nice little program to test just how smart the spambot is, and how it deals with the unexpected. A browser will pretty much just show a bunch of strange characters, but spambots are not as smart as a browser. The idea here is to get the spambot to open it's mouth, and the shovel everything you find down it's throat. Hopefully, it will break. :)

• View Shovel in action (use carefully: the randomness has a small chance of crashing your browser)
• Source code for Shovel

Spambot Beware: Main page <> Detection <> Avoidance <> Harassment <> Glossary