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Odd
Anyone know why this site is listed as the top referrer to my site even though I see no link? Or does anyone know how to find out why?
Update: removed link because I am instructed by Chris in my comments that I have been a victim of referrer spam.
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Posted in uncategorized on February 12th, 2004
by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |
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February 12th, 2004 at 12:21 pm
Welcome to the wonderful world of referer spamming.
Basically, in HTTP, any request to a webserver can include a header called HTTP_REFERER which includes the link of the referring page. The problem is that it’s completely arbitrary and completely spoofable.
Some browsers, I have noticed, can be set to set the referer to an arbitrary URL if there isn’t a referring URL.
The truly insidious manifestation, though, is spammers that actively spam your website with requests with forged referers.
The idea, believe it or not, is that they are hoping that enough websites run statistics (like mine: http://chris.quietlife.net/stats/) and that they’ll get free publicity if they are a top referer.
The infuriating thing is that there’s no easy way to stop it. These spammers often use distributed, compromised computers. There’s really no way to blacklist them, because each subsequent request comes on an IP in a completely different block.
I did at one point write a script that watches for subsequent requests with the same (fake) referer and adds them to a blackhole in my firewall, but I haven’t set it up again since I rebuilt it.
February 12th, 2004 at 12:39 pm
Didn’t somebody vault to the top NZ Bear’s Ecosystem doing that?
February 12th, 2004 at 12:42 pm
I think NZ bears trouble with the ecosystem is that if someone enters an alt-host of http:// , it counts all blogs as linking to it. I could be wrong though.
February 12th, 2004 at 2:30 pm
What was the domain? ( just makin’ sure it ain’t me ).
February 12th, 2004 at 2:33 pm
it’s not a domain. It’s the http part:
And nothing else.
Go here:
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/showdetails.php?host=http://blogspot.com
And look at Alt Host 1
February 12th, 2004 at 2:34 pm
By the way glenn, are you a TN resident? The RTB is looking for ya.
February 12th, 2004 at 3:07 pm
Yeah. I’m in Knoxville.