Listing removal required.

[Expertu]

- Guess I am a bad-bot then. Darn, always tried to be a good-bot I clicked that little ole link and now I get the affiliate pages that expertu talks about Guess when my IP resets I will have to try again.

 

Thanks motsa for checking it out.

 

If USA and Romania IP's are bad, is that a website accesible to all ?

 

I have no spyware on my PC. Guaranteed

[lmocr]

Hey - I'm in the USA. But I'm not a bad bot like someone else on here. I know when to keep my mouse to myself (most of the time ).

[motsa]

Crap on a cracker. I tried clicking again from home (I was at work before) and now I've been flagged "You are forbidden from accessing this server." So, now I get the bad bot stuff. Dangnabbit. I knew better than to click it. I knew it. But I did it anyway.

[Expertu]

My definite point is this : this website has some kind of scheme (either he knows it or not), and eventually, those affiliate links will show to a lot of people.

[motsa]

Keep in mind that, until we started clicking on that tiny, hidden bad bot link, none of the rest of us were getting that page. None of us. So, I suspect that whatever made it flag you right off the bat is not indicative of a widespread problem.

[Expertu]

So, I suspect that whatever made it flag you right off the bat is not indicative of a widespread problem.

 

Flagging a visitor by start is not a problem ? I never clicked anything there, because i never had the chance to see real content.

 

Click on the above link i placed (seeing the website trough a proxy, online), and you will NOT see that bad bot link. At least i didn't found it.

 

If you would ask me, it's way to problematic with this website, to have so much discussions on it.

 

I think you either leave the website included, because there can't be real proof about it's problems, or remove it, because of suspicions (which is not a good choice).

 

End of story

 

PS: Only ODP editors can have a signature ?

[motsa]

Then I guess we leave it listed, because we have not determined that there is a problem. *You* have a problem viewing it. We have not. I don't find what they've done suspicious in the slightest. I know a few people who do that occasionally to people who've been harrassing them via their web sites -- they set up a really horrid redirect just for the harrassers, based on their IP address.

 

Click on the above link i placed (seeing the website trough a proxy, online), and you will NOT see that bad bot link. At least i didn't found it.

It's there -- but it's an invisible link on the bottom left of the directory page, just above the English to Spanish drop-down list -- highlight the page and you'll see it.

 

Yes, only editors can have signatures.

[Expertu]

Ok .. Thanks for the help

[Callimachus]

I took another look and this is what seems to be happening ..

 

They have implemented the equivalent of a "honeypot" trap for bots and web spiders that ignore the robots.txt and the <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow,noarchive"> directive which they have in their page.

 

A properly designed bot will obey the specifications and NOT spider the page hence will never follow the hidden link however one that blatantly ignores the site directions will be sent off to lala land - this includes users that click on it as it can not differentiate between an individual and a spider/bot.

 

I have implemented similar things in the past for e-mail harvesting bots that sent them to page after page of garbage e-mail addresses.

 

It's basically harmless to a user of the page and well behaved bots.

[Expertu]

It's basically harmless to a user of the page and well behaved bots.

 

So i'm either not a user or not a well behaved bot. That's a good thing right ?

[motsa]

It could well be that someone else has had your current IP (or something in the range of yours) and messed things up, getting either the IP address or an IP range blocked. So, when you try, you're pre-flagged as a badly behaved something.

[Expertu]

Well, it could be yes.

[Callimachus]

It is also possible that the hidden link is tied to a script that grabs the IP address of the visiting "entity" and drops it into a list of IP's that have followed the link. As I said since it isn't generally visible when normally browsing the page the only entity that would normally follow it is a misbehaving bot.

 

Of course, a curious human would get snagged in the the same trap

[Expertu]

Of course, a curious human would get snagged in the the same trap

 

I never actually had the chance to see the real content. My first visit to that page showed me the affiliate links page.

 

Three friends of mine (Romania, USA, Canada) received the same page, on their first visit too (i asked them to visit that page).