How to Block Submissions to StumbleUpon

Following a similar analysis to not getting dugg, I can now tell you how to block submissions to StumbleUpon. However, unlike blocking all submissions to Digg, there is a twist in this story.

Like last time, block the IP address 69.36.233.8. This currently resolves to smtp.stumbleupon.com.

The twist: everyone will be allowed to submit the page to SU. However, you will not get any traffic and all reviews will not be visible even if someone submits a review. What you get instead is an error message (see screen shot below) that says "Website currently unavailable. Should we check again?". The text "check again" is a link and has a title attribute of "This site has been marked as unavailable. If it is now working, click here to flag for inspection".

This gives us a clue into the inner workings of SU and I'll leave it to you to speculate. Fundamentally, we intentionally break a check that SU automatically does. It does not block submissions, but it does break things enough to ensure no traffic and no reviews.

I would like to experiment with this further. If you're interested in joining this experiment, gimme a shout and we'll talk ;).