Every month, I get a visit from the bot that the Cyveillance folks run. They tickle everything on all three domains I run, including (apparently) trying to touch the administrative functions. It’s been pretty innocuous, and so far they haven’t tripped the spider-bait, which means they are (so far) paying attention to the rules in my robot file. However….

In reading a bit more about them on Webmaster World and gulker.com, it seems that they are quite a bit more insidious than their traipsing about my site would make them appear. At best, I infer they are a “copyright protection” outfit, looking for copyrighted material. At worst, it appears they are a “cease and desist” generating machine, with no human at the helm. Gulker.com has a pretty good introduction to their tactics and compares them against a kinder, friendlier bot, our friend Googlebot.

A site, Cyveillance Exposed, even refers to their tactics as computer terrorism, as things are defined nowadays. Given the description of their tactics, and what I’ve seen them try here, I guess I’d have to agree.

DiveIntoMark has a great bit of info on how to identify and block some of these abusive bots, like Cyveillance’s appears to be.

Too snoopy, too sneaky. Congratulations Cyvelliance — you made the banned list!