It'd be interesting to keep a list of the bots, and randomly redirect the traffic back at them. My first thought was that this would mess up people who unknowingly have a bot on their computer, but then I realized this might actually make them look into getting their computer fixed.
Am I missing something here, or is this actually a decent idea?
I suppose you could always redirect to 127.0.0.1. Maybe even go for a port that's likely to be open on a statistically random compromised system, like 135 (Windows DCOM, can't close it to localhost without breaking like half the system).
Edit: I just tried this in IE on my Win box; the connection even stayed open for a good long time! Firefox blocked it, though, which is probably good.
I doubt these bots can handle the redirect request. Its js and I don't see why someone would code to support it. Maybe someone better informed than me can say whether curl or wget respect redirect by default.
Am I missing something here, or is this actually a decent idea?