Virtual Newsletter about Software Freedom

December 20, 2025

Tricking crawlers
-----------------

Crawlers are annoying. Especially these[1] crawlers.
Well, instead of directly blocking them, you can have some fun.

I've covered a tool called `iocaine`[2] which sends crawlers in a maze forever if something seems wrong with the agent.
Now, `iocaine` has much more features but is harder to set up.

There's another tool called Nepenthes[3] which has cool features as well.
I do have a lot of crawlers on my site(s).
I might set up this software, as it's very small.

Either way, you should install one of these maze softwares on your HTTP server.

- NexusSfan

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/refs/heads/main/robots.txt
[2] https://iocaine.madhouse-project.org
[3] https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/

---
Copyright (c) 2025 NexusSfan
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
A copy of the license is included at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0
---