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

Question.

[mindstrm]

Suppose I have a form on my site to collect customer information.

Could filling this form with obviously bogus information and advertising be considered theft of services, or fraud, or something else?

Well...

[devphil]

...personally, I was hoping that one of the victims of the Washington, D.C., sniping spree would turn out to be a major spammer. Guess they were all humans instead.

Re:Spam Lite

[sidster]

I've noticed an increase on my yahoo! account.

I used to get zero (honest zero!) spam on that
account. The only mistake I think I made was to
use that account in my purchases both at buy.com
and outpost.com. So, I have those two sites under
suspicion of selling my email address.

My personal address though, I used to get about
may be 3 or 4 spams a day. A tolorable amount.
These were spams where I was in the To or Cc list
as I filter emails where my email address isn't
in those field into a spam folder which I browse
through for valid emails from friends once a month
or so.

Then I noticed a big jump in amount of spam:
10-15 spams a day!

Keep in mind I have been using ordb.org for
quite a while now.

This increase in spam prompted me to start my own
blacklist. I started keeping my spam and parsing
source IP addresses. Originally I had about 900
IPs listed. I didn't see a dramatic decrease in
spam though. Though I did notice soon after using
my blacklist that i got a few emails confirming my
subscription to "so and so list" was.

Next I noticed a huge flood of spam from
azoogle.com servers. So they just got firewalled
out! (a quick search on them also showed quite
a few sites, including universities, that blocked
out azoogle.com completely).

Now, my blacklist is roughtly at 2200 IP addresses
and I get about 5-8 spams a day. A fair decrease
from the original 10-15 a day I would say. And
every week i keep adding to my blacklist.

Does anyone else have similar experiences?