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New Spam Frontier: Referer Logs

Posted by timothy on from the die-spammers-die dept.

geoffsmith writes "Wired News is reporting that spammers are using referer logs as a cheap new way to spam small sites. Anyone running a website has probably already seen this phenomenon; I'm thinking of writing a script to remove these entries from my access_log by looking for hits that don't grab my images. (sorry lynx users!)"

8 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Lynx users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    (sorry lynx users)

    Don't worry. It's highly unlikely that any of the 4 current users will visit your website anyway.

    1. Re:Lynx users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      (sorry lynx users)

      Don't worry. It's highly unlikely that any of the 4 current users will visit your website anyway.

      You mean there's another 3 lynx users out there? I'm not alone!

    2. Re:Lynx users? by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 2, Funny

      hmm, that must mean... *queries* ...179 of the distinct Lynx visitors I've had in this past year must be faking their user_agent then. (Or switching ip and lynx versions a lot that is of course also possible.)

      Of course, it's all us Internet Explorer users who've hacked it to report as Lynx so that we can be outraged when web sites refuse us too. Why should the rest of you get all the fun?

      --
      To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
  2. In other news... by CySurflex · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows users are complaining that Microsoft is filling up their computer's System Event Log with spam about illegal exceptions and page faults.

  3. Re:referer information should be disabled by defau by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I cant tell you how many times a referer log in my access log files contains someones email account pw for their web based email service... and being the ass that I am, i read their email. its quite fun.

  4. Re:You can do better than that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't know spam that managed to involve a virgin, a cock, a septic tank, and a gentleman from Nigeria would almost have to be interesting.

  5. Re:referer information should be disabled by defau by jukal · · Score: 5, Funny
    I have come across a few sites that use the refer info to let you access files and images, so other sites can't just link directly to the file.

    Yes, referrer information makes an excellent authentication scheme for highly confidential system dealing with transfer of mission critical information. ... Just also check for a magic string in the user agent and voila! trusted computing reinvented. To make it unhackable - just add a few more levels of obfuscation. ;))) The sad part of this, is that I have actually seen authentication schemes like this. Don't know whether I should cry or laugh :)

  6. No! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    But if there were no referer info, then there couldn't be cool tricks like the time Somethingawful.com redirected visitors from Slashdot to goatse.cx!