New Scientist Breaking News - Project Honeypot aims to trap spammers

New Scientist Breaking News - Project Honeypot aims to trap spammers: "Project Honeypot, the brainchild of Chicago lawyer Matthew Prince, is taking advantage of a clause in the CAN-SPAM Act that makes harvesting email addresses for spamming purposes illegal. Spammers collect email addresses using 'crawler' software that trawls websites looking for them. These addresses are the spammers' lifeblood, and Prince hopes to cut off the supply.

Webmasters who want to help fight spam can download Project Honeypot's software, which is designed to turn their website into a magnet for harvesters. If the site detects that a crawler is visiting it the software generates a fake email address for the crawler to grab, and records the address of the crawler and the time and date.

The fake address then vanishes from the site, but remains valid as a mailbox. Because it is a fake, no one will send it legitimate mail. If any mail arrives it can only have come from the spammer who grabbed it off the Honeypot site, and this fingers the computer that crawled the site as belonging to the spammer. Detectives can then begin building their evidence"