hi,
i'm starting to generate more traffic on one of my sites than i care to and it's bots harvesting names.

how can i block them?

the host i'm with uses cpanel 4.something or other.

thanks!
john

What kind of bots? The e-mail harvesting kind?

Yes...email harvesting. I've gotten rid of any possible link to an email address on all the domains under my care. I use a php email form instead.

but even still...i'm seeing at least two sometimes as high as five crawlers a day on my log files.

i'm hunting for ideas.

thanks!

Use mod_rewrite

http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/#ToC37

If its only a couple of bots and you have a consistent HTTP_USER_AGENT tag for them, this will work fine. Redirect them to a spam site for fun.

Be aware that every test will add to the number of tests done on every hit (not page, hit).

Try wpoison.

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

Um if u feel like it just write a quick java script that adds different parts of your email address together after someone clicks on the link.. There was some software that wrote the script for you. forgot what its called though.

Well, try a robots.txt (Google for it). I don't know how well those bots will obey it, though.

Another option is to obfuscate addresses or posion them with a bunch of phony addresses.

Take a look at:http://www.evolt.org/article/Stopping_Spambots_II_The_Admin_Strikes_Back/18/21392/

google has something about robots.txt. You can put something it it to tell it not to spider your site.