Google and Tor.

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Matthew <pumpkin at cotse.net> wrote:
>> People are running automated datamining queries _via tor_ in order to
>> gain control of more IPs and avoid being blocked.
>>
> What is a datamining query exactly?  Is this what I would call "typing some
> text into the search box and pressing enter"?  And how does entering a
> datamining query allow one to gain control of more IPs?  And being blocked -
> from what?  Totally confused.

For example— a friend of mine was querying google maps to find out
their estimated travel time between every pair of US cities over some
size threshold.  After about a month of this they blocked her IP and
she moved to using tor, spreading the traffic across many exits
(which, as far as I know they never ended up blocking).

People do bulk google queries to look for sites to spam (e.g. by
googling for UI elements from wiki software plus keywords useful for
their spammish purposes). These are the datamining things I was
referring to.

Another example, some people have operated fake search engines which
do nothing but serve their own ads/malware and then direct the real
queries back to google.

I'm sure that there is a ton of potentially abusive behaviour which
I've never seen or thought of but which google is aware of.

I think it would be nice if captchas and blocking weren't the only
anti-DOS/anti-abuse mechanisms used on the web today, but this is the
world we live in.
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