8.7.05
My fight against referer spam
Ever since I syndicated this site to Planet DSLR, I've been getting referer spam...and it seems that I'm not the only one.
For those unfamiliar with this, Wikipedia defines it (in short):
Referer spam is a kind of search engine-targeted spam...gives the spammer's site improved search engine link placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use.
Essentially, these are the same low lifes that want to flood your inbox with useless advertising. So how do you fight them?
Well, my main defense has always been "this" site. Since I don't use a packaged blogging system spam bots targeting those systems skimmed right over me. The two prior times I did have spam (which were manually entered), I quickly deleted it and never seen it again. That is until last week on my Shameless Plug page.
When I first made that page, comment spam was never a consideration because blogging wasn't the thing it is today. Also, I police that page pretty hard as well, so if anything crazy shows up, it gets deleted fairly quickly. Referer spam, though, is sneaky. It comes in quickly, repeatedly, and at the worst possible times. I had to come up with something that can do the policing for me.
Enter the Spammy Check. Taking advantage of a spammer's own trait (loading a referer listing with similiar links and repetative words), I parse every plug to see if it repeats the same words. If it does, it doesn't get posted. Oh, and instead of them leaving referrals about their junk, they update a list of keywords that will judge other spammers' attemps. Schweet!
I'm still tweaking it, but so far it seems really promising.
1:58 am in i hate spam | 1 person viewing0 ramblings so far