Re:Blunt Banhammer Blocks Basic Bots Ballistically
by mzajc on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:47PM
(#50447938)
Two more potential problems with this:
- Someone might (maliciously or not) send a honeypot URL to a messaging service with URL embeds, try archiving it with IA or archive.today, try opening it in Google Translate, or use any other kind of manually-operated service that ignores robots.txt. This would prevent said service from working on the site entirely, unless you had whitelists.
- Someone might maliciously add images or such linking to a honeypot URL from their site to get people banned.
Not sure how likely these scenarios are or if they can be guarded against without giving the bots a loophole, but I wouldn't feel comfortable IP-banning visitors on my sites for sending GET requests to the wrong URL.
- Someone might (maliciously or not) send a honeypot URL to a messaging service with URL embeds, try archiving it with IA or archive.today, try opening it in Google Translate, or use any other kind of manually-operated service that ignores robots.txt. This would prevent said service from working on the site entirely, unless you had whitelists.
- Someone might maliciously add images or such linking to a honeypot URL from their site to get people banned.
Not sure how likely these scenarios are or if they can be guarded against without giving the bots a loophole, but I wouldn't feel comfortable IP-banning visitors on my sites for sending GET requests to the wrong URL.