Oct 17, 2006

topicblogs/0.9 Email harvestor or scrapper?

topicblogs/0.9
72.36.205.226 226.205.36.72.reverse.layeredtech.com

topicblogs Has no real working website just a email collection system to trick you into giving them your email address.

We throw this into our list of fake startup companies running scrapper and email harvestor bots. If it was a valid bot it would have a link to a real working webpage.


Also layeredtech.com is banned for abusive bots.

3 comments:

Christopher said...

Unsure as to whether topicblogs is an email harvester - it's been mentioned on TechCrunch and Technorati - and on the TechCrunch blog there's a reference to one Jeff Han, who's associated with TopicBlogs via an entry in a list of attendees for a past TechCrunch social gathering.


So, I guess we'll wait and see. If I get a marked increase in the volume of spam I receive in the next month, I'll know that it was a fake, because I put my email address in! ;)

Anonymous said...

Hey mystery blogger,

This is Jeff from topicblogs. Our "plans" for the email addresses we've collected are entirely benign. :)

We're in (an extended) private beta. It's hard to stay under the radar when crawling is an integral component of our service. :)

You can reach me at jeff AT guess-which-domain if you have any questions.

Jeff

tmaster said...

Bots that do not identify themselves and what they are doing are all suspect. Also using up our bandwidth just because you want to is not allowed.