Still cleaning out my closet, I found that interesting piece that I saved back in August 2013.
Back in the days, I stumbled upon a creepy site called “bannasties.com”, which is now defunct (the domain name was abandoned and it’s actually not registered at all anymore). Not sure how I found it, probably by browsing some other site that used it for “protection” again “evil bots”. I always use some kind of proxy so I tend to trigger those kinds of paranoid protections, as well as getting a fair share of “Access denied” and a truckload of captchas – thanks Google and Cloudflare, which, fun fact, was spelled CloudFlare with a capital F back in 2013.
Anyway, all I kept in my draft was a verbatim copy of the site’s front page (or maybe it was the about page). And it’s a fun (although creepy) read. Even more so when you think that now there’s that little something called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The purpose of bannasties.com is to collect data on spammers/hackers/scrapers/crawlers and other pests that hammer web sites so that I, Lucia, can look at aggregated information. Others can find pages because it is indexed by google and I think it’s nice for people who were looking for a specific IP or host to be able to learn a few details. But it is not my intention to create a resource that permits the world to do “research”. Please don’t try to use this to conduct your own research, the filters on this site are really really tight and constantly changing and you are likely to get banned. Seriously, the rules at bannasties are draconian. The reason for this is that the site is boring to normal humans bot candy for bots. If you are human, you wish search a little bit and also want to avoid getting banned:
Don’t be a bot. Don’t even ‘look’ like a bot. Bot visits are strictly prohibitted.
Always start your search from here or by way of a search engine. It’s currently fairly safe to search for banned IPs, user agents or Hosts by using the appropriate search form. Click a link to load the search form:
Search Form to Find an IP. Example: 78.46.93.87..
Search Form to Find a User Agent. This searches for partial strings provided they contain at least 4 characters: (e.g. “majestic”, “80legs” “mozilla”). .
Search Form to Find a Host. This searches for partial strings provided they contain at least 4 characters: (e.g. “kimsufi”, “corbina.ru” “server”). .
Do not try to search by guessing URI’s. Just don’t do it. The probability you will look like a bot is too high.
Don’t submit more than 3 queries an hour. Queries are submitted if you load a page containing a ‘?’ in the address or press a submit button. Once you’ve submitted more than 3, wait an hour then come back. This site is not intended to permit anyone other than the owner to do extensive personal research.
Don’t use a proxy server or vpn. At. All. (If I detect a proxy, you will be banned. )
Do pass referrers in the default way. That is: No blank referrers. No spoofed referrers. No fake referrers.
Don’t be from a spammy country. The list I consider spammy is constantly changing. But these countries will always be on it: China and Brazil. So are some other countries.
Don’t originate your request from server or web hosting company (e.g. dreamhost, bluehost, hostgator etc.). Use an ISP whose main service is providing internet connectivity (e.g. comcast, at&t, verison etc.) By the way: if this rule means you can’t visit bannasties from work, so be it.
Don’t use a mobile device. I know lots of people use those, but spammers, hackers and scrapers use them. If I detected them here I ban them.
Accept cookies from my site. (You may reject third party cookies.)
If you want permission to visit more I suggest you do something that will send you the ‘banned’ message. (For example, running to many queries times in an hour). You will be presented “the scary page”. The find the email link, click and email me. Explain to me why you want to run numerous searches and if I approve of the reason I might be able to arrange something. But.. really…the number of crawlers here is ridiculous. This site is mostly intended to be for me and provides a very limited amount of access to others who might have been sent here by Google.
Even following these rules does not guarantee you won’t get banned. There are bots ‘out there’ doing really ‘interesting’ things and I write rules based on behavior I observe. If your browser or bot does something that looks really weird, you are likely to get banned.
Privacy policyThis site grants you zero privacy. All connections are monitored. I set cookies; I check them. I change the information set on cookies all the time. Those caught by the spam/hack software are filtered and logged. Data collected when you visit this site is not kept private, could and likely will be discussed publicly especially if you turn out to be a server, vpn, violate any rules described above or even any I dream up in the future.
The End ^^
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