* * * * * “Avast ye swabbies! Copyright and Trademark violations abound!” > **From:** Bob Apthorpe > **To:** Sean Conner > **Subject:** More run-ins with Nameprotect.com > **Date:** Sat, 11 Jan 2003 04:52:18 -0600 > > > … > > Early on, I found spiders from Cyveillance.com rummaging through a bunch of > my dynamically-generated web pages (message boards, mailing list admin > pages, etc.) Of course, there was no reverse DNS (Domain Name Service) on > the spider and it was claiming to be some version of Internet Explorer, but > hitting pages once a second and crawling every day on a dynamically- > generated calendar is a tip-off you're not dealing with a meth-addled web > surfer. Rainman, perhaps, but definitely not a real human. > > I don't have anything to hide but that's no justification for letting ill- > mannered commercial robots rummage through the electronic equivalent of my > sock drawer. I close the door when I'm in the bathroom. I wear pants. > Modesty and privacy do not imply improper behavior. Besides, I have a few > hundred megabytes of photos of improv comedy shows I've played in. I don't > want my connection saturated because some anonymous robot was brainlessly > and greedily slurping content that no human was ever going to enjoy, at > least not in the way I intended. My network, my rules. > Email from “Bob Apthorpe” Now I know blogger's readership figures are inflated. I checked and sure enough, Cyveillance [1] came ripping through my site last month for 213 hits (that I didn't notice—I think I'm now down to 75 or so real human hits per day). Now, unlike NameProtect® [2]'s rather terse use of Mozilla/4.7 [3] as a user-agent, Cyveillance [4] has gone the other extreme: > Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0);Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; > MSIE 5.05; Windows NT 5.0);Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.05; Windows NT > 4.0);Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.05; Windows NT 3.51) > I guess they're running their robot under Windows 2000 (reported as Windows NT (Not Today)5.0), Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT 3.51 and want to cover all the bases. > Brand Protection Solution > > Cyveillance's Brand Protection Solution helps companies actively protect > their brand equity by returning control over online brand integrity and > use. By identifying and providing detailed intelligence on sites leveraging > a company's brand for their own commercial purposes, Cyveillance enables > companies to transform the Internet from a branding liability to a high- > impact branding medium. > > With Cyveillance's Brand Protection Solution, clients are able to > accomplish the following: > > * Create a more positive online branding experience for customers across > the Internet; > * Build customer loyalty through consistent representation and > understanding of brand messages; and > * Increase ROI (Return On Investment) and effectiveness of online branding > initiatives. > > Client Success Story > > Many clients have leveraged Cyveillance's Brand Protection Solution to > prevent revenue leakage and recoup lost dollars. For example, a large > insurance agency leveraged Cyveillance's Brand Protection Solution because > the client wanted to stop traffic diversion from its corporate Web site by > other sites leveraging this client's name, logo and slogan to drive > business. Cyveillance identified several hundred cases of sites diverting > potential buyers away from this client's site. These cases included several > in which the client's own agents were using the brand to drive traffic from > the corporate Web site and others in which sites were using the > recognizable name and logo in meta tags, URL (Uniform Resource Locators)s > and titles. > > With this knowledge, the client could immediately take action against the > misrepresented sites, prevent further revenue leakage and strengthen brand > equity. > “Cyveillance Brand Management [5]” Beautiful the way they phrase things, isn't it? I would think that effective use of Google [6] would be just as effective and possibly cheaper than hiring an outfit like NameProtect® [7] or Cyveillance [8], but that's just me. It would be nice if these sites would follow the Robots Exclusion [9] protocol but nooooooooooooo! My only consolation is that they find their way towards xxx.lanl.gov [10], because, you know, the name says it all, and besides, they just loooooove robots [11] coming through their site. [1] http://cyveillance.com/ [2] http://www.nameprotect.com/ [3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/01/05.1 [4] http://cyveillance.com/ [5] http://www.cyveillance.com/web/solutions/brand_protection.htm [6] http://www.google.com/ [7] http://www.nameprotect.com/ [8] http://cyveillance.com/ [9] http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html [10] http://xxx.lanl.gov/ [11] http://xxx.lanl.gov/RobotsBeware.html Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org .