why and how does a referer spam?

[pantarus3]

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. How is that and what is the purpose? How does it benefit the fake sender and other than having inaccurate stats how does it affect my URL. So am I to understand the above statement is kinda like junk mail that gets put in your bulk folder like advertisments etc...and because I have a blog and it is not an email box it doesn't get filtered? How does this referring URL get my address to send fake referers? cause I definitly dont have a link on this page that keeps showing up on my stats.
PS Thanks John for your help
and more thanks cause I am sure you will be the one to answer these questions as well
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Dawn Gray

[john]

Some blog systems used to display a dynamically updated list of Recent Referers on their home page, so spammers would send forged web page requests to a popular blog in order for a link to the spammer's site to appear on the blog. The theory was that the outgoing link would increase the ranking in Google for the spammers site, not to mention get a few clicks from the curious.

Since our system does not generate a list of Recent Referers for display on your blog, the spammers don't get much benefit from the practice, and all we as bloggers end up with is decreased utility of our Site Stats...

How does this referring URL get my address to send fake referers? cause I definitly dont have a link on this page that keeps showing up on my stats.

No, you do not have a link on the page that shows up in your stats, and that's the point. The referer is a fake, that's what makes it spam. They're trying to make it look like there was a link on a page out there, and that's the scam; they're trying to get you to go to look for that link... Once you get there, they might try to use the page to sell you something, install spyware or viruses, or whatever...