How to Get Rid of Referrer Spam?

wikinerd asks: "I have recently opened my own community website. Everything was fine until spammers found it, which happened quite quickly. As usual they filled up my mailboxes, but SpamAssassin can take care of that when it is needed. Then, they discovered my blog and my wikis and employed their bots to fill them up with spam comments. I solved this problem by moderating all comments. Now, however, they employed another evil trick: Referrer spam. They caused my webserver statistics to grow up by orders of magnitude by making their stupid websites to show up on my referrer lists. Unfortunately now my webserver usage statistics are full of viagra, poker, casino, porn, spyware, and pharmacy sites. I am afraid that this is a problem I cannot solve with the knowledge and the tools I have at the moment. So, I came here to ask Slashdot readers: How can I fight referrer spam and what tools are available in a GNU/Linux environment to ensure clean and spam-free usage statistics?"

Comments

Re:Did you google before posting this?

[BoomerSooner]

For those of you out there that still cannot figure it out. Ask slashdot is for the poster but also can provide relevant information to other people that didn't think of the problem in the same way. For example, I do not host any blogs at my company but if I decided to I would have this question and answer set as a good reference (in addition to googling).

Googling info isn't always the best, frequently people contribute things to this blog that you cannot duplicate by a simple query on google.

And last but not least you can always turn ask slashdot off in your preferences....

So for the last fucking time: YES HE CAN GOOGLE IT BUT SHE DECIDED TO ASK SLASHDOT INSTEAD. Move on.

Re:Did you google before posting this?

[yog]

Yeah, I find ask slashdot useful too. When you filter out the "Why didn't you just google it, moron?" type comments and the "why would you want to do that anyway" trolls, you sometimes get some useful information and discussion regarding the various ways to solve the O.P.'s problem.

I see Ask Slashdot not as a substitute for a simple keyword search but rather a supplemental verification process. I have found that keyword searches don't necessarily reveal best practices; you get unedited, unrefuted claims that you have to sift through. In a reasonably informed techie discussion forum like Slashdot (sometimes), you can get some interesting debate and comparisons on various approaches and methodologies.

And, as you noted, it's a way to be exposed to problems which I don't currently have but might someday. Then when I encounter the problem, I hope a little fragment of memory in my aging brain will bubble to the surface to remind me that it's been discussed on Slashdot.

For researching technical problems, the best thing is to combine Google, Slashdot, Usenet newsgroups, and specialty forums such as (in the O.P.'s case) webhostingtalk.com, spend a little time in each place and take notes. From amongst voluminous chaff generally there's a bit of wheat to be harvested. ;-)

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it should also be noted that the way to put useful information out there in the first place so that googlers can find it is precisely this sort of forum. Google is only your friend if there's something out there worth searching for.