| TheFLY |
02-25-2002 03:21 PM |
Quote:
Originally posted by WildWebAmateurs
Hey Fly, I will tell you this. Kman and I discussed this problem last week, and I can tell you that I have a way of detecting hitbots that cannot be circumvented by proxies or "perfect" simulation of browsers. The catch is I'm trying to figure out how to "monetize" it. I could very easily do a script and distribute it but we all know cheating fuck webmasters don't buy shareware, so I'm looking at it as a service.
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How can you tell the difference between me for example -- and my very same browser effectively using a complex macro (that I created to surf your site) while I sit on my sofa and watch TV... ???Hypothetically this macro could change the IP of my browser -- for all purposes I am a real surfer -- I'm just not looking at the screen... Regardless of proxies a hitbot can simulate everything except human decision making -- and this is where my focus has been... most webmasters should fear that their websites don't require or measure complex decision making... a simple macro can be programmed ahead of time to repeat real human decision making...
Yes I've coded my own detection and I think I've come up with a simple elegant solution that makes me feel safe... but I'm still a little worried that there are some sites that are sprinkling hitbot hits here and there to give themselves a competitive advantage -- essentially falling under everyone's radar with other unmalicious bots...
Also I think anyone that releases a hitbot detection system -- especially for sale -- is difficult to trust. I could release one myself easily -- and it may catch 95% of all hitbots and everyone will be happy to look at their stats and see how many hitbots they detected today by such and such means -- but this doesn't mean that the webmasters using the detection software even understand how it works (unless you provide full details) -- meanwhile the other 5% of bots out there continue to elude detection...
Regardless -- even if you COULD detect 100% of all bots -- it wouldn't make any diffference because there's nobody to point the finger at once you find the bots... also unless 100% of all webmastesr are using your software effectively -- you still lose -- because everyone not using your software will seem to have more traffic ;) Do you think a site like Thumbzilla really wants to not allow any bots to travel through his site? Of course not -- a) he would lose SE indexing b) output to trades would go down resulting in lower recips... c) counter stats would drop |
