Fighting the Good Fight Against Spam
Not only do I, Dr. Adam Bittner, want to help people by providing free education to make amazing beer, but I also welcome any opportunity to fight against exploitation and deception on the Web. I've been working behind-the-scenes to do just that.
Spam is a continual problem on the Web, especially for sites that allow user-generated content such as a wiki. Should we just roll over and take it? Heck no! In response to some recent spammers, I hunted down an old honeypot script that I had installed on one of my previous websites.
What's a honeypot? It's basically a trap for spammers and others that are up to no-good. This particular script generates a large number of web pages, each with tons of fake email addresses. The spammers use automated programs (called spiders, or bots) that read web pages looking for email addresses to spam. Once the spiders come across my honeypot, they get stuck in a quagmire, going through huge numbers of pages while collecting endless fake email addresses. This does two things: 1) it keeps the spiders busy so they can't get any real email addresses, and 2) it pollutes their list of harvested email addresses with garbage, rendering it useless.
Just within the last couple of weeks my simple script has fed around TWO MILLION fake email addresses to spammers!!
You're welcome, Internet. Enjoy your beer in peace.