New Spam Frontier: Referer Logs

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!)"

Comments

The spammer speaks...

[reaper20]

"I'll adapt or I'll discontinue. I'm not planning on becoming the major annoyance of the blogging world.... I'm not too worried my reputation. Marketing is all about being innovative, different, adaptive, taking risks and knowing how to use the technology. I'm trying to be all that."

Heh, it's funny that this guy can make this statement and expect to be taken seriously. It's even more pathetic that he actually thinks he's "innnovative".

referer information should be disabled by default

[jukal]

I don't know who started it - but I find it very odd that browsers send referer info by default. Why? It does not provide anything extra for the user but problems. It is not once or twice that you find URLs to "confidential" pages if you browse through your webserver logs. And... I bet 95% of web surfers do not even know that they are sending this information all the time. Is there really any reason why the default is to send the referer info? I have seen people riot on much less important privacy issues. Why not about this? The referer plague exists in almost all browsers - and only in few browsers you actually can easily turn it off. What's going on?

Re:They will never stop.

[kryonD]

True, but at the same time wrong. Has anybody else noticed that the internet is currently the most active battlefield in hostory?

Lowlife (but capitolist god bless 'em) pigs generate spam to sell their penis enlargement scam and mail clients develop ways to filter and block email. Distraction.

Distributed Denial of Service attacks attempt to shake the very foundations of the NET through bandwidth flooding and sysadmins implement redundancy and load balancing. Jamming - Frequency Hopping.

Remote exploits and virus appear everyday and patches are generated quickly for the more quality OS's and virus updates are required daily for Micro$oft OS's. Infiltration.

Governing bodies exist that the people disagree with such as the RIAA and MPAA. Demonstrations are held in both violent(DDoS) and non-violent(civil disobedience of P2P) manners. Revolution.

Needless to say, civilization has managed to survive for thousands of years despite man's desire to control everything including his fellow men. I think the internet will find a way.