Five Days of Project Honey Pot Announcements

Project Honey Pot Begins Tracking Comment Spammers

We began Project Honey Pot more than two years ago to track one kind of malicious robots: email harvesters. Since then, a new malicious robot has appeared to terrorize bloggers, forum administrators, and search engines: comment spammers. These robots travel the internet leaving links to spamvertised web pages in order to drive traffic and increase their search engine rankings. Today we're announcing that Project Honey Pot is tracking comment spammers as a first step in stopping them.

We have begun to publish a list of the top comment spammers, just as we already publish lists of the top email harvesters, spam servers, and dictionary attackers (click on any of the IP addresses to see more details). You can also see information on the countries where comment spammers are located, as well as the top URLs currently being spamvertised.

Without giving away too many details, the system works by including comment forms on the thousands of honey pot pages already installed by users in more than 100 countries around the world. As comment spammers run across these forms we record what information is posted. We then use this data to construct the statistics that are published on this site.

For example, you can now see the top countries where comment spammers are located (#1 United States, #2 Korea, #3 Russia, and more), as well as the top keywords (e.g., "rolex replica watch", "cialis", "free sprint ringtones", and more) and URLs they're promoting. Along with their IPs, this data can be used to stop them from filling your blog or forum with useless garbage.

If you want to help track comment spammers, it's easy. Simply register for Project Honey Pot and either install a honey pot on your web server or include a QuickLink on your web pages. It's free and should only take you a few minutes. The more people who participate, the greater percentage of the comment spamming universe we are likely to see. And, every time you login to your account, we'll even show you the comment spammers you've personally helped catch.

Comment Spammer Tracking Mini-FAQ

I already installed a honey pot, do I need to reinstall it to begin tracking comment spammers?

Nope. Honey pots were architected to be very flexible. If you've already installed a honey pot you don't need to make any changes. Your honey pot has been quietly catching comment spammers for at least the last week and will continue to do so. Login and check out your Dashboard in order to see the comment spammers you've already caught.

If I include a QuickLink on my site will I still help track comment spammers?

Yes. The key to catching comment spammers is getting them to stumble across as many honey pots as possible. Your including a QuickLink on your blog or forum can help achieve this goal.

Are you willing to share this data with third parties?

Yes. Contact us and we can talk about how we can work together to make the world more comment-spam free.

How can I use this data to keep comment spammers off my site?

Check back tomorrow. :-)

If you don't already have one, create an account help track comment spammers by installing a honey pot or including QuickLinks on your blog or forum! And, don't forget, more Project Honey Pot announcements are coming tomorrow.