3 ms·

If you can detect it reliably, poisoning them with bad answers might be enough to cause them to find an easier target.

• dspillett 3y ago
  Be careful with that. A friend once did something similar to an active scraper who then went off and set his site up for a full blown DDoS. He knew that was the reason for the intentional DDoS due to messages (along the lines of “think it is funny to poison my information do you?”) in the query string of the bulk requests. Like unpleasant fools making a big noise in shops because they aren't served immediately after cutting in line or some such, the entitled can be quite petty when actively taken to task for the inconvenience they cause. Passive defences are safer in that regard, assuming you don't get into an arms race with the scrapers, though are unfortunately more likely to mildly inconvenience your good users.
  • tyingq 3y ago
    That's fair. Perhaps a middle-ground of poisoned answers that look like overload related errors. Though I did have success once stopping hot-linked images by serving up images that didn't fit well with the sensibilities of the internet forum that was hotlinking them. It had the advantage of looking like the people in the forum posting had deliberately chosen to post the image. Serving different images depending on client ip made for fun too, as they argued with each other about why they posted "that".
    • dspillett 3y ago
      > Serving different images depending on client ip made for fun too, as they argued with each other about why they posted "that". Evil. I like it.