The antispam web project is an attempt to curb the amount of nuisance emails, or
spam, that is currently being distributed over the internet.
Some people feel that this is not a problem, because they use a fake address or a kill file.
However, the spam problem is more than just recieving unwanted mails. Spam slows down the system.
Using fake addresses causes messages to 'bounce', which for the most part are not sent to the
original mailer. These can bounce between several servers before stopping in an administrator's
mailbox, growing with each server it hits.
Using a kill file stops you ever seeing the message, but it has still been sent. These
messages will use up bandwidth and disk space on various servers. This slows the
entire internet down.
Spam takes time from everyone on the net. We should all do our best to put a stop to it.
What do I suggest?
The Antispam Web is a trap I propose to build on the internet which will stop web bots
from gathering email addresses from homepages.
How this should be done most effectively depends on how the bots work. Here is what I propose:
- A bot with any complexity of design will keep a memory of where it has been. Small loops, therefore, would be ineffective.
- Some bots will doubtless use refined search strategies to avoid wasting time looking at pages with only one link.
- Large pages being downloaded by the bots would mean extra loads on the server. The load should be as much as possible on the bot computer.
What I want is for numerous people to reserve small areas of their web-space for
pages in a large web of dummy pages purely designed to occupy the bots without supplying
any email addresses for spam use.
There should be no standard format for these, as new bots could then be designed to avoid these pages
altogether.
These pages should be made as small as possible, yet with enough content that a bot sees
it as a real page. Links should not be unlabeled, but should have labels that would 'interest' bots,
eg. "contacts", "email us", "click here!!" and other standard link labels.
By creating a web of these, with various different numbers of links (to confuse the bots), we can cause the bots
to become significantly less useful.
Anyone who has any comments on this project can email me at:
"[email protected]"
If you want to set up a page in the web, create an empty page (or several empty pages)
and email me the URL(s) which I can then forward to some other people to add in links.
I will then get back to you as soon as possible with URLs to add to your page.
In the meantime, here's a trivial sample of a
small section of trap, which I shall expand and link other sites to, as and when they join the project.
Hope to hear from some of you soon.
Cheers