Suggested: SpamBust

[bupaje]

I added a hidden page to my site and linked to it from some of my other sites to inconvenience spammers a bit. http://stormvisions.com/pages/spambust.php It links to other sites that generate random urls/emails and theoretically can clog spammer bots databases.

If anyone thinks it might be generally useful to create a module to generate a page like this then some things to consider

You should add a robots.txt file to disallow this page and/or folder so 'good' search engines that find that page don't block your site. Add the Google rel=nofollow parameter to all links on the page, use a separate template without your normal meta tags and links so as to not pull them into your real site content, and I'd propably add the

Code:

<meta content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" name="ROBOTS" />
<meta content="INDEX, NOFOLLOW" name="ROBOTS" />

to this template to again help good bots avoid this page -bad bots don't respect this anyway. In addition if the page could link to fake images, urls and emails -possibly to other sites that offer this as I have done- it might cause them to index an endless amount of fake pages and emails.

Here is a link to a php scrips call PHP Spam Poison you might find useful http://www.mariovaldez.net/software/phpwpoison/ if you want to take a crack at this. I just built a page manually but figured I'd suggest it.

[Argos]

Among randomly generated mail addresses there will always be some that are accidentally real ones. This for me is one reason not to use this. Besides, is there any proof that it actually works and has any impact whatsoever?

[bupaje]

Unfortunately the spammers would probably not participate in a poll to tell us how dissatisfied they were with the service. So you are right in that it is hard to determine how effective this is. However spammers basically  use the same mechanical means of collecting data that legitimate bots do. Since Google, Yahoo and others can be fooled into indexing content that they didn't intend then it seems logical that spammers who use similar data gathering methods can be attacked in the same way. The success of course will depend on the level of sophistication of their algorithms, or ability to manually verify a site's exposure of real data, and thereby sort out the junk. My guess is that even if they have the resources of an Anti-Google it will prove a nuisance to many of them.

A more real danger - I think- would be in poorly designing these spam busting pages so that real engines inadvertently link to them. If they respect the nofollow tags, and robot.txt files and the pages are isolated from real pages then I think that can be avoided.

[Argos]

Unfortunately the spammers would probably not participate in a poll to tell us how dissatisfied they were with the service. So you are right in that it is hard to determine how effective this is. However spammers basically  use the same mechanical means of collecting data that legitimate bots do. Since Google, Yahoo and others can be fooled into indexing content that they didn't intend then it seems logical that spammers who use similar data gathering methods can be attacked in the same way. The success of course will depend on the level of sophistication of their algorithms, or ability to manually verify a site's exposure of real data, and thereby sort out the junk. My guess is that even if they have the resources of an Anti-Google it will prove a nuisance to many of them.

I think they don't care at all if a certain percentage of their giant mailing listst are non existant addresses. Sending mail to randomly created addresses without knowing if they exist, is even one of their own tactics.

[bupaje]

I think they don't care at all if a certain percentage of their giant mailing listst are non existant addresses. Sending mail to randomly created addresses without knowing if they exist, is even one of their own tactics.

That is a valid observation. I honestly don't know if the 'spam poison' approach is effective. I am going to dig around a bit and see if there is any empirical data that would help determine what impact - if any- this might have on spammers. Anyway, I've gone off topic but if I do find anything I'll add a note..