Forum Moderators: phranque
Any suggestions on where to send them after they fail? I was thinking about sending them to Matt Cutts' blog (sorry Matt) or maybe the spam page in Google's help center.
Seems to drive the point home to the spammer that they are not welcome... Most never come back after that... ;-)
dc
DC- it is pointless accept that it makes me feel better without expending too much energy.
piatkow- I don't see that as an issue for the average user, they should see that the number they entered did not show up before submitting. I will watch for it though.
I've also thought of the possibility of passing back a 404 error, but I doubt that many (if any) bots are advanced enough to remove the page from its list of pages to SPAM.
In most cases, malicious robots will not follow a redirect, so trying to redirect them is just a waste of your time and internet bandwidth. Just return a 403 response and be done with it.
I'd recommend a custom 403 error page, somewhat apologetic in tone, but factual, explaining that access has been denied, and telling a presumably-innocent reader what he/she can do about it. However, it is not good to provide any information that might actually help a malicious visitor, so do not gloat about how/why access was denied, or the technical basis for denial. Keep in mind that knowledge is power...
Ask them to note the time and their IP address (provide this info on the custom 403 page), and tell them what to do to get access (phone you, e-mail you at a 'special' super-filtered and often-changed e-mail address, send a postcard, etc. with the above information), and thank them for their cooperation and interest. Remember that you *will* catch a few people who just can't read or type.
Of course, the above assumes that your site is fairly unique, and that people are at least somewhat likely to go through the bother of contacting you to get access restored.
Jim
the site logs their ip for blocking and thenI use to block ip's but quit that as one day after blocking some fraud order ip's I got a call to place an order hit send payment and got the error IP has been blocked from purchasing from this domain.
I learned a valuable lesson most spammers are using a proxie IP address and blocking them is not effecting them at all and most likely causing you some good customers.
I am with jdMorgan just send them to a custom 404 page and be done with it without blocking the ip address as it is possible to block out your traffic to the point it causes you serious problems.
Again, that's a 403 page, not a 404. :)
Jim
