Some websites collect data on visitors to their website. One bit of gathered data is the address of the website the visitors came from. This address can be faked, and referrer logs are increasingly being filled with "visits" from sites with innocent-looking addresses - but they are actually porn or herbal medicine or other spammy sites. The spam might not be noticed unless they are in the top 10 or top 20 visitors of a site -- so they relentlessly visit a site in order to push their address to the top of the analysis chart. This is referrer spamming.
Related categories 2
Sites 7
Added Bytes: Block Referrer Spam
Dave Child provides a blacklist of spamming sites which can be used in an .htaccess file on an Apache server to block referrer spam.
AngryPets.com: ReverseDOS
A free tool by Michael Campbell to stop comment and referrer spam by serving up an access denied response to spammer's bots.
Capn Design Archives: Referrer Spam is Out of Control
Weblog entry with a few coding suggestions and examples to thwart the spammers.
MetaFilter - Referer Log Spam
Talks about companies like mastodonte.com and their business models of spamming referrer logs.
Referrer Log Spamming
Brief description of the technique and the purpose, with some examples.
Sam Ruby: Referrer Spam
Weblog entry discussing ongoing problems and solutions.
Redemption in a Blog: Smarter Referrer Spam?
Blatant referrer spam may be evolving into more a subtle game.
(April 06, 2004)
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Last update:
September 15, 2016 at 21:57:51 UTC