Seems like I need a form of MT-Blacklist for my referrer script now. Ever since I installed Jay Allen’s wondrous little tool the amount of comment spam I’ve had to clean up has been greatly reduced and the ones that do get through are cleaned up and added to the list with ease. It’s so good you’d almost think the comment spammers are backing off, but then when you check MT’s activity log you see all these comment denied notifications from attempts at spamming all the blogs we run here and realize they’re not backing off in the least.
The spamming trend that’s my current headache, however, is referrer spam. This is where the spammers setup a script that just hits my referrer logs so the links to their sites will register and be counted by Google when it indexes my referrer listing. It seems like the script being used was designed specifically to target the Textism Referrer script because it’s so popular. I run it mainly to see who’s coming to my site out of simple curiosity and I’m debating whether it’s worth continuing to use if it’s going to generate so much spam.
The script has the option to add in keywords from URLs you don’t want it to count, but the spammers must have tons of free time on their hands as they’ll register all manner of variations on a URL to get through and it seems they’re particularly fond of making use of the free Blogger offerings to set up false fronts to bring people to their sites. I’m willing to bet they’ve even automated that process by now. When you click on the URL it takes you to the “blog” they’ve set up that contains nothing other than a link back to the site they REALLY want you to go to and perhaps a warning that you need to be 18 to enter. One site offering a supposedly legal alternative to Marijuana has at least three different blogger front-ends they’re spamming my referrer list with including ‘marijuana-seeds,’ ‘pot-seeds,’ and ‘weed-seeds.’ Spotting these spams isn’t hard in part because of the URL, but also because they only hit my referrer script directly so the URL of the page they’re hitting stands out from all the other pages on my site. I could live without a referrer list and I’m growing tired of having to edit it to include more filter keywords and re-uploading it over and over again so I may just drop it altogether.
Just one more reason that if I ever meet a self-admitted spammer of this sort I will go against my better nature and probably punch him or her right in the mouth. I’m not the sort who’s predisposed to violence and I don’t feel it would solve anything, but it would make me feel a lot better and I think they could use a couple of good shots to show them how much we appreciate their efforts.
