Five Days of Project Honey Pot Announcements

With QuickLinks, Now Everyone Can Participate In Project Honey Pot

Project Honey Pot has been tracking spammers and email harvesters for more than two years. Tens of thousands of volunteers from more than 100 countries have participated in order to help clean up the Internet. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of people who have wanted to help have been unable to because they do not run their own web server. That problem ends today.

To track harvesters and other malicious web robots before today required that volunteers have the ability to install our honey pot software on their web servers. Volunteers who ran blogs through services like Typepad, Blogger, or Live Journal could not help even though their sites were prime targets for the bad guys.

Today we are launching QuickLinks. This new program means that anyone who has the ability to post a link online can now help us track harvesters and other malicious web robots. After signing up for a new account, or logging in to your existing account, you will be provided a link. Hide this link on your web pages and we'll track anyone who follows it.

We have found that the more in-bound links a honey pot has, the more malicious robots it traps. The QuickLinks program is a way to allow more people to participate in Project Honey Pot while increasing the number of in-bound links to existing honey pot pages.

QuickLinks Mini-FAQ

How do I get a QuickLink to include on my site?
Just create an account or login to your existing account. Once you've logged in, select "Manage QuickLinks" from the menu and follow the instructions. The whole process should take you a few minutes, and most people start catching malicious web robots within about a week.
Where should I put QuickLinks?
On any web pages you control. For example, if you run a blog, we suggest including a QuickLink in the footer of every page. The more links we have, the more malicious robots we can trap.
Is there any special format you'd suggest I use for the link?
We suggest that you use a format that is unlikely human visitors to your site will follow, but still visible to web robots (for example, linking from a single pixel image). On your QuickLinks page we suggest some formats you can use. Please feel free to experiment with your own.
Will you tell me what harvesters and other malicious robots I help trap?
Yes! So long as you include the link exactly as we provide it to you then we will give you credit for catching the bad guys that follow your link. You can see a list of all the robots you've trapped at any time by logging in to your account.
I administer a web server, should I use a QuickLink instead of installing the honey pot software?
No. QuickLinks are only intended for users who do not have administrative access to their own web server. If you have the ability to do so, we strongly encourage you to install the honey pot software.
I installed a honey pot on my site and I don't want people QuickLinking to it.
Don't worry, the only honey pots we distribute QuickLinks for are those whose users have affirmatively opted-in to making their honey pots "shareable." While we would like as many shared honey pots as possible, if you haven't marked your honey pot as shareable then it won't be included in the QuickLinks program. Don't forget, you can also change you mind and turn on or off sharing for your honey pots at any point.

Create an account and get QuickLinkin' today! And, don't forget, more Project Honey Pot announcements are coming tomorrow.

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