After some problems with the website going down last week and attempts at spamming the guestbook, I had a good look at the server logs and found some nasty goings on. 

I saw a few IP addresses were continuously downloading media from the website, and sucking up ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.  The same IP range attempted to spam the guestbook so I decided to block the IP addresses.  This didn't stop them from downloading (content scraping) from the site though, so I did a little more digging and found the domain responsible and have blocked them from accessing the site.  This may sound a little drastic as you would think it prevents some poor innocent visitor from viewing the site.  But guess what - the domain is known to operate Automated Spam Bots and probably has few paying customers for its ISP service (if any). 

I have identified and blocked a few of these domains (and individual IP addresses - Zombie Computers) and will routinely review them (and others) to help keep this site clear of parasites!