BlogHarbor Home Page
FAQFAQ  SearchSearch  MemberlistMemberlist  UsergroupsUsergroups  UsergroupsRSS   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    BlogHarbor Community Forum Index -> General Discussion
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 8:18 am    Post subject: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

Hi John,

How do i eliminate this url from accessing our blog? it shows up in our referral reports.

thx
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:03 am    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

You can block any IP address from commenting on your site in the following manner:
  1. Click the Settings & Security tab.
  2. Look at the row below that tab, the Options row. Click on the Firewall link.
  3. Enter the IP Address you want to block in the field on the left, then click Add IP Address.
That's all there is to it...


Last edited by john on Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:35 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Guest






PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:14 am    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

this is a url not an ip. i have been unable to determine the specific ip this url comes from. the intent of this site is obviously to mislead one into thinking it is an ip. i initially did enter it into the firewall but since it is not an ip it had no effect.

how do i block a url???

if you google this url you will find that others have complained about it spamming blogs. you should be aware of this and provide a way to block it.

thx
Back to top
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:17 am    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

that last post was from me.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:30 am    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

When you say that you want to eliminate spam from this URL, do you mean that they are sending you spam by email?

Or that they are spamming your blog's comments with irrelevant comments?

Or that they are doing what is referred to as referer spam, and making the list of referers in your Site Stats list URLs which you know do not contain links to your site?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:58 am    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

john wrote:
When you say that you want to eliminate spam from this URL, do you mean that they are sending you spam by email?

Or that they are spamming your blog's comments with irrelevant comments?

Or that they are doing what is referred to as referer spam, and making the list of referers in your Site Stats list URLs which you know do not contain links to your site?


it's what i said in my initial post:

cd wrote:
How do i eliminate this url from accessing our blog? it shows up in our referral reports.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 12:15 pm    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

I think what you are looking at here is referer spam. When someone clicks a link to your blog on another webpage, the request to access your blog also contains the page which referred that visitor to you. This is known as a referer, and it is indeed a misspelling which has stuck over the years.

Referer spamming is the process of forging requests to a website, sending fake requests to a web server for the purpose of leaving referer information in your access logs.

This spamming causes you to look at your Referer Stats and say - Oh look, someone is linking to me from such and such a site... Let's go see what they said about me! Then you go to the page and realize, there are no links to my site from that page - you got tricked into visiting that page! The spammers know that we filter our email for their spam, but take advantage of the fact that most of us look very carefully at the Referer Stats...

At this time, we do not have any tools which allow you to prevent Referer spam once you notice it in your logs. Most referer spammers are sending these requests from a distributed and changing set of computers so it is difficult to determine before the fact what is referer spam and what is a valid referer. Our developers are looking into this and other issues related to securing your weblog and we expect to be adding additional features to the service in the future.


Last edited by john on Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 12:17 pm    Post subject: Re: How to eliminate Spam from http://12.163.72.13/ Reply with quote

cd wrote:
it's what i said in my initial post:
cd wrote:
How do i eliminate this url from accessing our blog? it shows up in our referral reports.


Sorry I was confused by your initial post. URLs are web pages; web pages can not actually access your blog. Only browers can access your blog, so I did not understand the question the first time around. Thanks for clarifying.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:23 am    Post subject: BlogHarbor SPAM out of control! Reply with quote

John - i still get between 500 and 1,000 spam requests to my blog every single day. this clearly adds up in bandwidth charges that i have to pay. we need blacklisting at the server level since the url shows up in the site statistics. we also need to have the incoming ip address logged in the site statistics reports so that may be blacklisted as well. hopefully the following article will clarify the situation.

http://lcg.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2004/12/20/212278.html
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:56 pm    Post subject: Re: BlogHarbor SPAM out of control! Reply with quote

As for your site stats, we expect to be able to provide additional web statistics information in the coming months.

If you or any other BlogHarbor user thinks their site's bandwidth is being impacted by such abuse to the point where your monthly bandwidth quota might be exceeded, just let us know and we will make sure your account is adjusted accordingly.

Just as an FYI, referer spam actually uses less bandwidth than a legitimate page request by a real user since the "robot" which sends the fake request for your web page never downloads images, javascript, css, etc. It just sends a forged request for an HTML document so this has a lot less impact on your site's bandwidth consumption than a legitimate page request which would also download the images and so on along with the HTML document.

With regards to the issues noted on the article you link to, that is actually a problem of a different nature for a different blogging software provider. Their issue was with comment spam as opposed to referer spam. Their software was particularly susceptible to comment spam, and a bug in their software caused the problem to be worse that it otherwise would have been.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 9:12 am    Post subject: at a minimum this is completely screwing up usage statistics Reply with quote

at a minimum this is completely screwing up our usage statistics. we cannot get a clear idea of who is legitimately visiting our blog when we have up to a thousand requests from spammers. we also cannot know what the bandwidth impact is without any bandwidth statistics that can be broken down to the level of these requests. for example here are a few listings from 12/21:

225 http://www.handmade2000.co.uk/
127 http://www.philippestarckwatches.co.uk/
115 http://www.hermosa.us/
109 http://www.maloylawn.com/
105 http://www.fortisenterprises.co.uk/
101 http://www.academyofmusic.us/
88 http://www.slatersdvds.co.uk/


if you can provide bandwidth statistics i can know what usage impact it is generating.

we need blacklisting capabilities to kill off these guys by url and ip addresses. it is impacting our blog as stated above. we need ip addresses and as much other data as possible and more granular reporting capabilities than clicking on the monthly calendar. we need to be able to select variables to report, generate the report, and save it in the blog for future reference.

what additional usage stats are you creating, that you mentioned above, and what is the timeline?

thx
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 10:30 am    Post subject: Re: at a minimum this is completely screwing up usage statis Reply with quote

We do not have any additional stats we can provide to you beyond what you see on the site stats now. We understand your frustration, we see these referer spams on our sites as well.

Our developers are working on specs for additional reporting capabilities; we do not have any pre-release information or timelines to provide.

As I noted in my previous reply, if you get to the point where your monthly bandwidth quota might be exceeded and you think the reason might be related to bandwidth abuse by referer spam, please let us know and we will make sure your account is adjusted accordingly.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 10:41 am    Post subject: our blog is affected every month so please adjust Reply with quote

thx for the reply as always John. it is appreciated.

since we get at least 30,000 spam hits every month we consider our bandwidth quota and usage affected every month so please adjust accordingly.

thx
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:33 pm    Post subject: Re: our blog is affected every month so please adjust Reply with quote

Just for the record, that estimate is probably a little high, but we have contacted you about your account.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
cd



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 69

PostPosted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 2:29 pm    Post subject: thanks for addressing the issue Reply with quote

thanks for contacting me and addressing the issue.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Search all BlogHarbor support resources.
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    BlogHarbor Community Forum Index -> General Discussion All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum