The script gives page a name, usually randomly picked from a database or made up somehow, and fills it with a few dozen (at most) email addresses. These email addresses are cleverly created to appear perfectly valid but actually are useless - they are just made up.

Links to other fake pages are created for spam harvester to follow. Any robot (or human being, for that matter) that follow these links will find similar pages, full of desirable email addresses.

Depending upon robot, it's possible spammer could gather tens of thousands of totally fake, unusable email addresses before his robot blows itself out of water. It's even better if robot survives, as spammer now wastes his time sending messages to nonexistent email addresses.

In meantime, harvester has been lured away from valid pages which may or may not contain email addresses.

My site, Internet Tips and Secrets, uses one of these poison pills. It is called wpoison and it really works well. If you want to see it, look at this page.

http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/guestlist.pl

If you want to get a copy for yourself, check out wpoison page.

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

This is just another weapon in war against spam.

Is it effective?

I know from personal experience that it does trap spam robots, and it does seem to lure them away from real, useful email addresses.

Is it ethical?

I believe so, as long as you are careful to include meta tags to inform "good" robots to leave pages alone as well as some text to let your visitors know what's going on.

It's not as satisfying as spamcop.net, and there is no where near that pleasant glow of success upon learning that some scum spammer has had his ISP cancel his account, but poison pill is useful nonetheless. My advice is to include it in your arsenal along with other weapons and tools at your disposal.

To see a list of article available for reprint, you can send an email to: mailto:article-list@internet-tips.net?subject=send_article_list or visit http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm

With apologies to Robert Pirsig, I have slavishly copied style of his very famous book - "Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - into title of this article. That, of course, is where any further comparison stops.

I do, however, have a good reason for concocting my title.

I recall that Mr Pirsig's book explored themes for an improvement in self (in particular) and society (by inference), and one of those themes was QUALITY. Applied to every aspect of our existence, quality of what we do can have a profound effect, from highly positive to lowly negative. Whatever we say and do, write and send, can have those effects, obviously.

So, maybe it's not so much quantity of SPAM that we all get that is problem (although, there are limits, right!). Maybe, we should be concerned more with quality - in broadest sense - of message? In particular, I'm thinking of messages that are relevant, appropriate, targeted and - dare I say it - even helpful!

However, SPAM we all love to hate - shot-gun style, bulk commercial email, splattering all through system - would obviously rate very low in quality stakes, for most people (although, just quietly, I understand there is a secret network of SPAMmers who simply delight in sending each other into lowly orbit every day?), but business-to-business email must surely have its proper place. And, that would include all businesses, of course, not just Blue Chip and Silicon Valley...

Which, very soon (if not already), will begin to trouble strident anti-spammers even more: as more and more people set up their own online e-businesses all over world, there may come a time when there are more businesses online than there are mere consumers.

Hmmm...now, there's a thought! ;-(o)

You are no doubt aware that many agencies - government and private - continue to grapple with SPAM genie, but ultimately it is, I think, impossible to "get it back in bottle".

In that regard, I have read a number of articles - and have even received an unsolicited email about "permission marketing"! I have responded to some but, try as I might, none have returned with an unequivocal, "dyed-in-the-wool", "shake-it-till-it-breaks" definition for permission marketing. I suspect it will be a while before I do.

But, I would be eternally grateful to anybody who can supply it!

Somebody once said, "Nothing happens until somebody sells something." Well...fatuous as that may sound, we are all trying to "sell" something to somebody. Right?

By all means protect consumer to a reasonable and effective degree, with appropriate legislation and penalties. But, it would be shooting ourselves in foot (or worse) to burden e-business with self-destructive restrictions and penalties.