Please Help!!! Bot Attacks :(

[LJackson]

Hi All,

OK i am havig a bit of trouble with some computer bots accessing my page and apparently steeling traffic :(

the main culpret is
Performance Systems International

here (http://www.google.com/search?q=Performance Systems International)is what google returned:

has anyone else had any problems with them and can anyone please advise me on how to block the little ****.

any help and advice would be great
many thaks
Luke

[abduraooft]

Google gives http://www.my-whiteboard.com/business/performance-systems-international-inc-is-stealing-your-data-doing-nothing-good.html, which may be helpful to you.

[LJackson]

hi thanks mate i have seen this page before and i am going to contact my web host to see what they recommend :)

[masterofollies]

Those annoying things should be illegal. Since they are harmful to websites. Maybe check on the address of the company, and see if it exists and press charges. It'd help coders all over the world.

[LJackson]

the website that is related to this bot has a statment on there site saying they have nothing to do with this problem

here is what they say:
"Please Note: We are not an Internet Service Provider (ISP). We are not affiliated with the ISP Cogent Communications, formerly known as "Performance Systems International". If you are trying to track down the usage of an IP Address beginning with "38." (38.xxxx.xxx.xxx), then you need to contact Cogent Communications. For information on how to report abuse to Cogent Communications, please see http://www.cogentco.com/us/cs_faq.php or to view their WHOIS entry click here."

so i clicked on the http://www.cogentco.com/us/cs_faq.php link and sent them an email, lets see what comes of it :)

[CFMaBiSmAd]

That psi-cu-software company picked an unfortunate name. It probably never had anything to do with the 38.xxxx.xxx.xxx addresses (the current IP address of the companies site is not in that range) and the problem being discussed.

Performance Systems International/Cogent is a major data center. They have been assigned the whole 38.xxxx.xxx.xxx address range and any particular part of that address range will correspond to a server in that data center. The IP addresses that don't correspond to a domain name just mean that someone has a server there but they are not expecting any inbound connections by anyone using a domain name.

Edit: And if you browse to an IP address in that range and it redirects you to a domain that does not have an IP address in that range, that is because they have setup a redirect, the same as if I redirect you to google. The domain you end up at may or may not have anything to do with the 38.xxx.xxx.xxx ip address.

[LJackson]

ah well i have blocked all 38.xxxx.xxx.xxx addresses and hopefully that will solve it.

[JulieV]

I was reading the blogs and the comments from the reply given by abdoraoof from the link that was given and it gives me chills. so how can you block this stuffs?Apparently, if you block the ip address you may end blocking the good ones and legitimate ones. In other words, (the way I understand it) its very hard to distinguished which is which

Thanks
Julie V

[LJackson]

I was reading the blogs and the comments from the reply given by abdoraoof from the link that was given and it gives me chills. so how can you block this stuffs?Apparently, if you block the ip address you may end blocking the good ones and legitimate ones. In other words, (the way I understand it) its very hard to distinguished which is which

Thanks
Julie V

i know what you mean i was horrified when i read about it, but im willing to take a risk by blocking all the ips from 38 i may loose some traffic but at lest it wont be stolen from me (well at least not from them, probabily thousands of others out there doing the same :( )

not sure what else to do?
cheers :)