[thelist] preventing (further) attempts to spam a site

[misterhaan]

Sarah Adams wrote:
> I was thinking that once someone (or a bot) tries to submit a form with
> bad input (based on evidence of header injection attempts or html where
> it shouldn't be allowed), rather than simply clean up the input or
> ignore the request, I could return a 404 header. I was thinking this
> *might* discourage them from trying again. What are the chances this
> will make a spammer stop coming back to spam this form? (I wouldn't
> expect it to stop all spammers, but if it stopped even a few, it might
> be worth it.)
I would think a 403 would be more appropriate than a 404, but at the 
same time I'd be surprised if spammers are paying any attention to the 
response they get from the server.