Name Protect bot a big pest

How to ban it?

[mayor]

The Name Protect bot has been cluttering up my log files. Here's one record:

12.148.209.198 - - [29/Aug/2003:12:04:56 -0400] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 674 "-" "NPBot (http://www.nameprotect.com/botinfo.html)"

I want to ban it by robots.txt

Does anyone know if it ignores being banned in robots.txt?

Can anyone confirm that this should do the job:

User-agent: NPBot
Disallow: /

[wilderness]

mayor
robots.txt is a request!
Not sure if these folks are compliant with robots requests.
Why waste your time tinkering and delaying with incomplete prevention of which you'll only need to complete in the future?

NAMEPROTECT.COM NAMEPROTEC642-196-128 (NET-12-148-196-128-1) 12.148.196.128 - 12.148.196.255
NAMEPROTECT.COM NAMEPROT75-209-192 (NET-12-148-209-192-1) 12.148.209.192 - 12.148.209.255
NAMEPROTECT.COM NAMEPROT93-0-32 (NET-12-175-0-32-1) 12.175.0.32 - 12.175.0.47

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^12\.148\.(12[8-9]¦1[3-8][0-9]¦19[0-6])\. [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^12\.148\.209\.(19[2-9]¦2[0-4][0-9]¦25[0-5])$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^12\.175\.0\.(3[2-9]¦4[0-7])$ [OR]

[jdMorgan]

NPBot does not respect robots.txt. It does read it, but pays no heed.

You'll have to use mod_rewrite or mod_access on Apache, or similar means on other server types.

Jim

[mayor]

OK, guess it's about time to bite the bullet and learn how to ban them with htacess. I've got abusive bots crawling all over my site, often consuming more bandwidth than legitimate visitors. Time to slam the door in their faces!

[Macguru]

>>NPBot does not respect robots.txt. It does read it, but pays no heed.
From their info page :

Practices the following best practices to ensure non-invasive crawling:

Honoring robots.txt files - to exclude the NPBot crawler, please use "NPBot" as the user-agent name in your robots.txt file (for more robots.txt information, see:
[robotstxt.org...] )

NPBot does not hit me that hard, so I never tried to ban him with robots.txt. But if jdMorgan, I am willing to redirect the bot home. ;)

[Gus_R]

I banned NPBot today.
I was paying bandwith to let them make their business.

[Ally_Cat]

I banned NPBot with robots.txt, and it has always obeyed it on my site.

[carfac]

For me, banning NPBot (and similar trademark search bots) is not a matter of bandwidth, but of something much more important: saving money.

It seems that two years ago, a company had their lawyers send me a C&D letter based on information gathered by one of these bots. Yes, I was using the name of their company, but in a wholey different context. (As an example, and this in no way reflects the real company name, suppoose my site dealt with two hypothecical copmuter systems... and one monitor showed oranges, and one apples. Now lets suppose my text read, "See the copmuter with the apples..." Note the words were OUT OF ORDER and COMMON words, NOT proprietary words like Xerox or something).

Anyway, it is obvious that a real person looking at this would have seen the obserity of the situation... but a computer just spit out the results, and I had to respond. That meant 200.00 to a copyright lawyer to send the response (I was NOT going to mess around, dispite my strong case)

So, lesson is, this can cost you money in the most unpredictible of ways... better to keep the shysters out. You do not gain a THING by letting them on!

dave

[Key_Master]

What's a copmuter [google.com]? ;)

[trillianjedi]

What's a copmuter? ;)

No idea, but sounds like a policeman that has to travel to get to work?

I see from that google search that you can subscribe to a copmuter training program!

Maybe we should all be doing that? What does carfac know that we don't?

TJ

[carfac]

>>> Maybe we should all be doing that? What does carfac know that we don't?

Nothing. I learn everything from you guys!

dave

[wilderness]

Nothing. I learn everything from you guys!

Hopefully?
You didn't attend their class "Building a Server 101" ;)

[carfac]

don:

>>> You didn't attend their class "Building a Server 101"

Actually, I was there, I just missed the day they covered "Box and screwdriver safety"

BTW, I am finally out of the splint, and can almost make a fist again. And thew server is burnin up the Internet!

dave