referrer spam, lots of it

  • I have a network with five subsites. Most of them just get comment spam and an occasional referrer spam, but one is literally hammered with referrer spam. I haven’t found a plugin that actually does something against it. I have Bad Behavior and Akismet running and by lack of anything better, I used to use WP Ban. This plugin does not seem to work with a multi install, so I switched to updating htaccess manually. Unfortunately I cannot do that from within WP or even at work (I can’t access Plesk). In any case, ALL last 20 referrers of this one subsite are referrer spam (in a few hours time) and I keep updating htaccess, but they are new domains all the time. I ran into a five year old thread in the forums with a bouncing script for index.php, so I started to find IPs with the domains, but unfortunately the 20 domains are connected to 13 IPs, so I’m afraid banning/bouncing IPs is going to be a dayjob just like banning referrers by domain names.
    Does anybody have a more workable way? And again, could Akismet not be expanded with a referrer spam blacklist?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    That’s a tough one. Normally, I’d recommend Bad Behavior, as it seems to be the only up-to-date plugin that can handle referrer spam.

    If Bad Behavior isn’t working well enough, and WP Ban doesn’t work with multisite, I think that manually updating .htaccess is your only option.

    Honestly, I’ve given up on blocking referrer spam. My AWStats is just filled to the brim with it, but I use Mint for tracking current stats and referrers. Mint is javascript-based, so most bots can’t execute it. I’ve never seen a single bit of referrer spam in Mint.

    Thread Starter Roy

    (@gangleri)

    That’s a tough one.

    Yeah, that’s why I hope this will some day be handled centrally too. Can I put this idea for Akismet under ideas or better some place else?

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Yeah, I’d recommend adding it to Ideas.

    Thread Starter Roy

    (@gangleri)

    Okidoki.

    Thread Starter Roy

    (@gangleri)

    Well, like I said, I looked up the IPs of the last 20 spam-referrers (my stats plugin lists only 20) and put these IPs and the domains in my htaccess and I haven’t received a single referrer spam since! Apparently the banning of the IPs is more effective than banning the domain names.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Just be careful that you don’t go overboard with IP blocking. Many referrer spam bots use proxies or spoofed IPs, so you could be blocking innocent legitimate users too.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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