Today I noticed that one IP address has been using wget, a command line tool for grabbing web pages, to get random words from unique-names.com’s random word fetcher about once per second. I’m not sure how long this has been going on, but I have stopped it today.
The way to ban an IP address on a single website on an Apache web server turned out to be easier than I expected. Just edit .htaccess and add two lines similar to this:
# banned IPs
deny from 123.12.1.2
Actually, the line starting with a # sign is optional, that’s a comment in the .htaccess.
That’s it.
As for who was trying to use the Naque for Unique Names nefariously? I’m not sure who it was, or what was the purpose. Whoever it is, if you read this, and if it was for something reasonably worthwhile (i.e. not SPAM), then drop me a line and ask for permission. Until then, you’re banned from the site.