Month: July 2006

Posted on

Do you live in NI and can not yet get broadband?

If so, I want to hear from you.

I believe that the DETI NI has fudged the contract with BT and let them away with making up the figures for the rest of broadband by allowing Satellite technology.  I believe this is against both the spirit and the letter of the contract.

We need to band together in order to raise a loud enough voice and force our Government to listen and, with luck, ensure that true broadband to the letter of the contract is delivered to enable every home and business in Northern Ireland to get broadband if they so wish.

Please reply to this post with your story, or email me directly via pgregg @ pgregg.com. I am particularly interested in Postcodes of people who have been denied broadband.  Also if you have an actual letter from BT – please scan it and send it to me,

Thanks,

Paul

Posted on

thetopsites.net stealing PageRank

In my earlier post today I mentioned the site thetopsites.net.  They are offering a snippet of code to display your (Google) PageRank on your webpage.

All very well until you look at the code provided:

Code:

<a href="http://pagerank.thetopsites.net/" title="Free PageRank
Meter for www.mysite.com" target="_blank"><img
src="http://pagerank.thetopsites.net/r.php?url=www.mysite.com" 
border="0" alt="Free PageRank Meter for www.mysite.com" /></a>


and the warning "You should not change in any way the above code(except the url of your site) or you will be disquallified from this free service".

Then you notice that they don’t use the now-standard rel="nofollow" property in the href or img src tags.  Put two and two together and you realise that their Free PageRank monitor is actually donating some of your precious PageRank to them (because that is how PageRank works).

Clever? Yes.  Underhanded? Certainly.

Posted on

BWDOW.COM referrer link spammer

I’ve noticed a small number of referrers claiming a link came from http://www.bwdow.com/newsites.php?category=newsites however if you go there you won’t find any link to your page.  I put it down to yet another referral link spammer.  Usually I just add the ip (or ip range) to my firewall and be done with it – but these guys had many different IPs which suggested it wasn’t some automated spamming engine.

It was obvious they were not valid click throughs because they were HEAD requests, e.g:
www.pgregg.com 81.213.243.127 – – [05/Jul/2006:05:47:34 +0100] "HEAD / HTTP/1.0" 200 – "http://www.bwdow.com/newsites.php?category=newsites" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)" "-" "-"

So, today it all came to a HEAD (pardon the pun) and I went looking for them and it seems that they openly admit to using referral spamming (under the thin disguise of claiming their reviewers must have clicked across to your great site).

See this google cache of their presently broken forum.

During my searches I also came across another reference to them in a thetopsites.net referrer spammer blacklist and noticed a new form of referral spam thievery which I shall look at in my next post.

Feel free to add the following IPs to your firewall to blacklist these BWDOW jokers.

Code:

plop:pgregg/p3-~apache/logs-431%->fgrep www.bwdow.com access_log  
| cut -d  -f2 | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -rn | ip2hostname.php
  33 208.98.1.192    (No-RDNS-Record)
   3 81.213.244.165  (dsl.dynamic81213244165.ttnet.net.tr)
   3 66.90.92.192    (usr1-114.sharktech.net)
   2 85.96.246.224   (dsl.dynamic8596246224.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.96.132.72    (dsl.dynamic859613272.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.96.132.32    (dsl.dynamic859613232.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.96.132.165   (dsl.dynamic8596132165.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.106.221.178  (dsl85-106-56754.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.106.219.204  (dsl85-106-56268.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 85.101.68.231   (85.101.68.231)
   2 85.100.0.155    (dsl.dynamic851000155.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.246.190  (dsl.dynamic81213246190.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.246.16   (dsl.dynamic8121324616.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.243.127  (dsl.dynamic81213243127.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.242.70   (dsl.dynamic8121324270.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.242.57   (dsl.dynamic8121324257.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.242.38   (dsl.dynamic8121324238.ttnet.net.tr)
   2 81.213.242.169  (dsl.dynamic81213242169.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 88.226.161.218  (dsl88-226-41434.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.99.91.55     (dsl.dynamic85999155.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.99.91.29     (dsl.dynamic85999129.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.99.91.1      (dsl.dynamic8599911.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.99.150.70    (dsl.dynamic859915070.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.99.150.22    (dsl.dynamic859915022.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.97.179.67    (dsl.dynamic859717967.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.97.144.139   (dsl.dynamic8597144139.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.97.144.10    (dsl.dynamic859714410.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.96.76.232    (dsl.dynamic859676232.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.96.133.148   (dsl.dynamic8596133148.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.96.133.108   (dsl.dynamic8596133108.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.96.132.248   (dsl.dynamic8596132248.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.96.103.27    (dsl.dynamic859610327.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.107.131.9    (dsl85-107-33545.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.107.129.212  (dsl85-107-33236.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.107.129.131  (dsl85-107-33155.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.106.223.192  (dsl85-106-57280.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.106.219.5    (dsl85-106-56069.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.106.219.153  (dsl85-106-56217.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.106.218.237  (dsl85-106-56045.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.104.231.205  (dsl85-104-59341.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.104.226.241  (dsl85-104-58097.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.104.226.18   (dsl85-104-57874.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.103.43.3     (85.103.43.3)
   1 85.103.41.84    (85.103.41.84)
   1 85.103.41.133   (85.103.41.133)
   1 85.103.41.106   (85.103.41.106)
   1 85.102.119.30   (dsl85-102-30494.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.102.118.150  (dsl85-102-30358.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.101.70.220   (85.101.70.220)
   1 85.101.70.17    (85.101.70.17)
   1 85.101.68.243   (85.101.68.243)
   1 85.101.66.97    (85.101.66.97)
   1 85.101.65.113   (85.101.65.113)
   1 85.100.3.186    (dsl.dynamic851003186.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.100.202.138  (dsl.dynamic85100202138.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.100.200.79   (dsl.dynamic8510020079.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.100.2.61     (dsl.dynamic85100261.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 85.100.1.90     (dsl.dynamic85100190.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.247.227  (dsl.dynamic81213247227.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.247.2    (dsl.dynamic812132472.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.246.57   (dsl.dynamic8121324657.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.246.21   (dsl.dynamic8121324621.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.246.199  (dsl.dynamic81213246199.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.246.1    (dsl.dynamic812132461.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.245.140  (dsl.dynamic81213245140.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.244.39   (dsl.dynamic8121324439.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.243.67   (dsl.dynamic8121324367.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.243.200  (dsl.dynamic81213243200.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.243.176  (dsl.dynamic81213243176.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.243.143  (dsl.dynamic81213243143.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.242.5    (dsl.dynamic812132425.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.241.171  (dsl.dynamic81213241171.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.90   (dsl.dynamic8121324090.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.68   (dsl.dynamic8121324068.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.25   (dsl.dynamic8121324025.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.155  (dsl.dynamic81213240155.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.153  (dsl.dynamic81213240153.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.150  (dsl.dynamic81213240150.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.149  (dsl.dynamic81213240149.ttnet.net.tr)
   1 81.213.240.117  (dsl.dynamic81213240117.ttnet.net.tr)

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This site http://pgregg.com has been online since 5th October 2000
Previous websites live at various URLs since 1994