The 'Bot is Back.

[mikepayn]

Looks like 208.99.195.54 is back. Visited us 11 times today and put over 120 items in different baskets (wish they could be real orders!). Anyone else seen it?

mikepayn
Carhampton eMart (http://www.carhamptonemart.co.uk)

[Dave]

Hi Mike,

Have not seen this one for a while. You could always block the IP address in the configuration-->site tab

We had a new one yesterday which visited one of our sites approx 40 times
83.5.150.127 seedmain.com (http://seedmain.com/)

Don't know who or what the above is and there appears to be nothing sitting on the domain name.

Worse thing is it makes a right mess of your stats!

[pinkypie]

Pardon my ignorance but what is 'the bot'? What does it do?

[mikepayn]

Pardon my ignorance but what is 'the bot'? What does it do?

Hi,

I was just reading this so I have pasted it in:

"Bots" - Short for Robots that trawl the internet, retrieving and/or reviewing documents. The Good ones help make sense of the Internet. Search Engines like Google use them to help classify your website and its content. The bad ones look for weaknesses to exploit. (rip off your email address to sell etc).

The main thing, as far as we are concerned, is that it throws out all your statistics. If you are looking at the average of the number of visitors against number of orders, it throws it all out. I think apart from that it's not too much to worry about. The persistent ones you can block anyway.

It's a fact of life nowadays, at some time you'll be visited and at some time you'll be spammed!

mikepayn
Carhampton eMart (http://www.carhamptonemart.co.uk)

[pinkypie]

I see, that explains a lot. I have been inundated with TONS of spam since I moved to bluepark, I usually just delete them but it is frustrating to have so many. I never realised this was how they got your address. So is there any safe way to have your email address on your website? Should I use a link maybe such as email us 'here' and then the link??

Regarding the stats yes, that is annoying too, I never realised until last week when someone said all of the hits could be search engines, LOL!! You learn something new every day.

[pinkypie]

I've got 4 of these one my site at the monent:

static-ip-87-248-86-207.promax.media.pl - IP: 87.248.86.207 - From Poland.

I get a bit obsessed by who is looking at any one time and then looking to see what they have in their baskets!

[Dave]

Hi Clare

I would suggest the following to try and reduce spam
1) Enable image verification on your contact form. This will stop bots sending spam via the form.
2) Do not show your e-mail as plain text on your site or any other sites that may link to you. If you want to show it either upload an image or show it as sales at fwy dot com
3) Try to use an e-mail address which is different. Most people use sales@ or enquiries@ and once spammers have your domain name they will try all sorts of combinations

There has been discussions on this subject before and maybe a search on the forum for spam will help further

[little-linguist]

I see, that explains a lot. I have been inundated with TONS of spam since I moved to bluepark,

We were in the same boat until someone on this forum recomended Cloudmark spam filter (you can use it with Outlook, Outlook Express / Windows Mail & Thunderbird I think).
We've found that it works very well for us, it gets rid of most of the cr*p and very rarely marks something as spam when it's not.
It's free to try for a fortnight so worth having a look perhaps? I think if you decide to keep it, it's only about £25 a year - well worth it in my opinion.

Link: http://www.cloudmark.com/desktop/

[pinkypie]

HIya again, mine has now been hit with the seedmain one, please can you tell me how to block it. I am going to do the above that you suggest too later on tonight, but I've had seedmain on my site all morning. I've read that they are a 'pharmacutical site' based in Spain that is rife with spammers so I would like to block that.

I picked that info up on here http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php so it might be worth noting if we get any further spammers on the site that we can ask who they are.

[petad]

please can you tell me how to block it. I am going to do the above that you suggest too later on tonight, but I've had seedmain on my site all morning.
You can block an exact IP address or partial address via the Admin Console. The field you need is located towards the bottom of Site -> Configuration: Site.

Just have a look in the Site Statistics view of the visits, and copy the IP adress from there into this field.