Tools for Dealing With Scammers, Spammers, and Squatters
While I was reading up on this whole typo-squatting thing, I came across links to a couple of tools that could be very handy for webmasters. I've downloaded and installed Microsoft's Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol. I've played around with it a little bit, and it's got two cool features.
The URL Tracer part creates a list of all the sites that are contacted when you visit a website. And it also lets you know if any of them have given you a cookie. For example, if you visit the FreeCashSpace blog, the list of sites that you're interacting with in some way include:
The Typo-Patrol lets you type in a domain name, and it will generate a list of possible typos (it came up with 198 typo domains for freecashspace.com). Then it will try to visit the website associated with each of those typo domains to see if any of them are active. It started a typo scan, but when I realised that it would probably take an hour or two to check all of them, I stopped it. But I can see where this tool could come in handy for companies who want to see if they're the victims of typo-squatting.
And the other program was called Fiddler. Fiddler serves as a proxy and shows you all the incoming and outgoing data between your computer and the net. It shows you HTTP headers, source code, and all sorts of other things. It's meant to be used by developers, and I wouldn't have a clue how to use it to its full potential, but I can see how it could be a very handy little tool for tracing comment spammers, click frauds "search engines", and people hiding things in 0-sized iframes. The Microsoft Strider Search Ranger project has some instructions to help people report comment spammers using Fiddler and WHOIS domain registration info. And if you don't think sending a few emails or making a few phone calls will do any good against the comment spammers, Chris O'Hara has a success story for you.
The URL Tracer part creates a list of all the sites that are contacted when you visit a website. And it also lets you know if any of them have given you a cookie. For example, if you visit the FreeCashSpace blog, the list of sites that you're interacting with in some way include:
- Amazon.com
- Blogger.com
- BlogMad.net
- BlogWise.com
- Feedburner.com
- FreeCashSpace.com
- HaloScan.com
- ImageShack.us
- PayPerPost.com
- Technorati.com
- TinyUrl.com
- VxBox.com
The Typo-Patrol lets you type in a domain name, and it will generate a list of possible typos (it came up with 198 typo domains for freecashspace.com). Then it will try to visit the website associated with each of those typo domains to see if any of them are active. It started a typo scan, but when I realised that it would probably take an hour or two to check all of them, I stopped it. But I can see where this tool could come in handy for companies who want to see if they're the victims of typo-squatting.
And the other program was called Fiddler. Fiddler serves as a proxy and shows you all the incoming and outgoing data between your computer and the net. It shows you HTTP headers, source code, and all sorts of other things. It's meant to be used by developers, and I wouldn't have a clue how to use it to its full potential, but I can see how it could be a very handy little tool for tracing comment spammers, click frauds "search engines", and people hiding things in 0-sized iframes. The Microsoft Strider Search Ranger project has some instructions to help people report comment spammers using Fiddler and WHOIS domain registration info. And if you don't think sending a few emails or making a few phone calls will do any good against the comment spammers, Chris O'Hara has a success story for you.
Labels: domains, webmaster tools
