{"id":20,"date":"2004-11-29T10:56:08","date_gmt":"2004-11-29T10:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pgregg.com\/wp\/2004\/11\/referrer-spam-a-possible-solution\/"},"modified":"2004-11-29T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2004-11-29T10:56:08","slug":"referrer-spam-a-possible-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/referrer-spam-a-possible-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Referrer spam &#8211; a possible solution?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ok, so referrer (HTTP_REFERER) spam is really starting to get on my wick^H^H^H^H goat (does anyone say wick anymore?), so after adding the latest ip to by referrer spam blacklist firewall the following potential solution hit me.<\/p>\n<p>Give the spammers what they want.&nbsp; They want people to click on the links that they are spamming, so why not.&nbsp; &nbsp;Sounds like madness? No, let me explain.<\/p>\n<p>In the same way we report spam, ala spamcop or other blacklists have a site that you can report URLs of referer spam to.&nbsp; Submissions would need to be checked by a list of moderators (perhaps in the slashdot moderator\/metamoderator style).&nbsp; Once a submission has reached a certain threshold &#8211; e.g. +5 posive votes with zero negative notes then the URL is added to the database.<\/p>\n<p>The latest web addresses are then published in XML format \/ RSS feed.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have a tool which reads these feeds and causes a single &quot;click&quot; download + all images on that page.&nbsp; &nbsp;It might cost us 10-100KB of bandwidth, but it also costs the spamvertised website.&nbsp; Now have 10000 or more people using the same tool, all clicking only the most recently advertised websites within 15 minutes of it being added to the database.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got a website killer right there&#8230; sorry, I mean you&#8217;ve got a really excellent response rate for the spammer &#8211; just what they wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Workable? Viable? Illegal? Does anyone really care?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ok, so referrer (HTTP_REFERER) spam is really starting to get on my wick^H^H^H^H goat (does anyone say wick anymore?), so after adding the latest ip to by referrer spam blacklist firewall the following potential solution hit me. Give the spammers what they want.&nbsp; They want people to click on the links that they are spamming, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/referrer-spam-a-possible-solution\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Referrer spam &#8211; a possible solution?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbQOUu-k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pgregg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}