SPAM Bots: unwelcome guests !

Submitted by Chandrashekar Babu on December 18, 2004 - 8:31pm.
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I was a little shocked today when I found that someone hit every single page/link possible on my website creating an immense spike on bandwidth usage. A quick whois check on the IP address (63.148.99.250) revealed the following:

root@phobos:~# whois 63.148.99.250
Qwest Communications NET-QWEST-BLKS-2 (NET-63-144-0-0-1)
63.144.0.0 - 63.151.255.255
Cyveillance QWEST-63-148-99-224 (NET-63-148-99-224-1)
63.148.99.224 - 63.148.99.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-12-17 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

Hmmm, a spam-bot scanning websites for e-mail addresses ? Another check on google revealed that a lot of bloggers and website maintainers hate this too - goes with the name Cyveillance/QWEST.

After little more google search, I found a nice website that maintains a list of bad bots on the Internet!. The site goes by the name kloth.net, and list seems well documented, perhaps I must add all these IP ranges to my website banlist. But then, maybe am not so paranoid about them right now.