Help Trap Spammers in a Sticky Situation with Project Honeypot!   10/26/2004 - 1,048 views, 3 Comments

Summary: How would you like to help to track, trap, and catch spammers? What if Aunty told you that all you have to do is put some invisible email addresses up on your website? You'd do it then, wouldn't you? "Sure, Aunty!" she ...

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How would you like to help to track, trap, and catch spammers? What if Aunty told you that all you have to do is put some invisible email addresses up on your website? You’d do it then, wouldn’t you?

“Sure, Aunty!” she can hear you saying, “Sign me right up! How does it work?” (You are so accomodating playing straight man for Aunty, thank you.)

Imagine having an email address on your website that no human can see, but which is visible to machines which are scraping your website for harvestable email addressess..you know, the ones where they grab the email address, spam the bejeezus out of it, and then sell it to other spammers for more bejeezusing. [I know, sounds like every “mailto:” link on your site, right?]

Now imagine that each of these email addresses is unique, and tied to (and forwards to) a special database, which tracks each of these email addresses wherever, whenever, and by whomever they are used.

Pretty cool idea, eh?

That’s exactly the concept behind “Project Honeypot”. In fact, that’s exactly what they are doing, and you can help, just by signing up and putting some email addresses on your website. They’ll take it from there, tracking, tracing, and turning in spammers.

So don’t delay, help trap a spammer today!

And tell ‘em Aunty sent you.

You can read more about Project Honeypot and sign up here.

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3 Comments »

  1. Comment by Lockergnome's Web Developers — 10/26/2004 @ 3:08 pm

  2. I think this is a great idea. I may be biased, though, becauase I suggested a similar trap back in May 2003. See http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12257&start=28

    I didn’t have the addresses forward to a database; I just suggested creating millions of fake E-mail addresses that spammers would waste time getting and that would generate errors when they tried to send mail there.

    Comment by Pony99CA — 10/27/2004 @ 2:23 am

  3. Hey this is cool. I registered immediately. Installation is straightforward if you are familiar with basic webmaster techniques. I gradually will do that for all domains we host with our customers. Slam these *##$%$#spammers

    Comment by mathias — 10/27/2004 @ 3:20 pm

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