Tricks to help prevent site ripping

[Dave Turner]

I know that its impossible to completely prevent somebody from ripping a
site (or cracking software) if that person has the skills and the
time/patience, but there are tricks that can be employed in software which
slow crackers down, from things like self-decrypting code to anti-debug
tricks, and most people have a breaking point - if you can slow them down
and waste enough of their time they usually move on to easier targets (and
as there are so many easy targets out there most people wouldn't waste too
much time on hard targets).

I was wondering if there are any such tricks that can be used to slow down
people who want to rip your website to modify and use for their own? The
dynamic server-side nature of PHP would suggest that something could be
done, because obviously when somebody rips a site they only get the HTML
from the PHP and not its source code

Any ideas?

[anjanesh]

You can use different templates (simple and plain) for your site - so when soeone goes to another page it doesnt have to be the exact design and colour.
This way there wont be a pattern for site extraction.

[thehuby]

Only thing I can think of is to write your PHP code and when complete
remove all the new lines - so the entire page is on one line. However
a simple search and replace could undo your work (replace all ; with
;\n).

Rick
www.e-connected.com

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Dave Turner (not@dave) wrote:
: I know that its impossible to completely prevent somebody from ripping a
: site (or cracking software) if that person has the skills and the
: time/patience, but there are tricks that can be employed in software which
: slow crackers down, from things like self-decrypting code to anti-debug
: tricks, and most people have a breaking point - if you can slow them down
: and waste enough of their time they usually move on to easier targets (and
: as there are so many easy targets out there most people wouldn't waste too
: much time on hard targets).

: I was wondering if there are any such tricks that can be used to slow down
: people who want to rip your website to modify and use for their own? The
: dynamic server-side nature of PHP would suggest that something could be
: done, because obviously when somebody rips a site they only get the HTML
: from the PHP and not its source code

: Any ideas?

When somebody rips a site they only get the HTML from the PHP and not its
source code.
--

This space not for rent.

[Jacob Atzen]

On 2005-08-15, Dave Turner <not@dave> wrote:

I was wondering if there are any such tricks that can be used to slow down
people who want to rip your website to modify and use for their own? The
dynamic server-side nature of PHP would suggest that something could be
done, because obviously when somebody rips a site they only get the HTML
from the PHP and not its source code

So you want to prevent people from reading your HTML?

--
Cheers,
- Jacob Atzen

[Colin McKinnon]

Dave Turner wrote:

I know that its impossible to completely prevent somebody from ripping a
site (or cracking software) if that person has the skills and the
time/patience, but there are tricks that can be employed in software which
slow crackers down, from things like self-decrypting code to anti-debug
tricks, and most people have a breaking point - if you can slow them down
and waste enough of their time they usually move on to easier targets (and
as there are so many easy targets out there most people wouldn't waste too
much time on hard targets).

I was wondering if there are any such tricks that can be used to slow down
people who want to rip your website to modify and use for their own? The
dynamic server-side nature of PHP would suggest that something could be
done, because obviously when somebody rips a site they only get the HTML
from the PHP and not its source code

Any ideas?

Yes lots (maybe I should write a book). The first problem you're going to
have is discriminating between searchbots (which you probably want on your
site and harvesters. But you'd also need to be a lot clearer about the
architecture of your site and what exactly you want to protect. Is it
really the HTML?

You should also be addressing the issue of *why* people might want to rip
your site. Perhaps providing syndicated content might be a better solution.

To get you started on anti-harvesting - think honeypot.

HTH

C.

[Erwin Moller]

Jacob Atzen wrote:

On 2005-08-15, Dave Turner <not@dave> wrote:

I was wondering if there are any such tricks that can be used to slow
down people who want to rip your website to modify and use for their own?
The dynamic server-side nature of PHP would suggest that something could
be done, because obviously when somebody rips a site they only get the
HTML from the PHP and not its source code

So you want to prevent people from reading your HTML?

Excactly Jacob.

What is the OP trying to achieve?
I do not see the point...

Regards,
Erwin Moller

[Will Woodhull]

Dave Turner wrote:

I know that its impossible to completely prevent somebody from ripping a
site (or cracking software) if that person has the skills and the
time/patience, but there are tricks that can be employed in software which
slow crackers down,

If you use sessions, you can track the number of page requests in a
time interval. If you see an unreasonable amount of requests per
second, you could stop serving pages to that session. That would
prevent many harvesters from obtaining more than a slice of your site
at any one time.

Is that the kind of impediment you had in mind?

[Gordon Burditt]

>> I know that its impossible to completely prevent somebody from ripping a

site (or cracking software) if that person has the skills and the
time/patience, but there are tricks that can be employed in software which
slow crackers down,
If you use sessions, you can track the number of page requests in a
time interval.

If you use sessions, the harvesters probably don't use cookies. Or
they have a bunch of harvesters running in parallel with different
sessions and different session cookies. Or, if you're using trans_sid,
there's a bunch of harvesters using different session IDs in the URLs.
If you see an unreasonable amount of requests per
second, you could stop serving pages to that session. That would
prevent many harvesters from obtaining more than a slice of your site
at any one time.

Is that the kind of impediment you had in mind?

I don't think it's much of an impediment. You might try detecting
a lot of requests from the same IP, which means you will slow down
or deny service to proxies like AOL and other large ISPs use.

Gordon L. Burditt

[Dave Turner]

> So you want to prevent people from reading your HTML?

err, no ... (obviously). Re-read my question. I didn't ask how to stop
people reading HTML, I asked if anyone knew of any tricks (of which there
are at least several) which can be used to slow people down from ripping
your sites content (ie. to use your website design for themselves).
Obviously this is something which can't be achieved 100% - if somebody has
enough time skill and patience then they can copy/rip and site, but slowing
them down will deter most people.