.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Ok so I finally got around to doing all the things I meant to do for a long time...

I also added the latest comments plugin on the index page, which although it's totally useless, it's pretty neat anyway.

The latest problem I've been having is with Referal Spam and Comment Spam.

For those that don't know:

Referer

A misspelling of "referrer" which somehow made it into the HTTP standard. A given web page's referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web page contains the link that the user followed to the current page. Most browsers pass this information as part of a request.

My referals were starting to look like this:

Which is not a good thing...

I found an addition to the .htaccess file which may stop this, I only started using it today though, so I'll wait and see the results..

This code sends back the '403 Forbidden' response for anyone who's asking for a header only and who is sending a referer.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^HEAD$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* / [F,L]

There are some things out there which use the HEAD command like local proxies and webcaches but they generally don't send a referer when they do this.

Source is HERE

There is also one to block on specific words/domains:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*(anal|adulthost|latina|shemale|viagra|valium|fioricet|ebony|
hydrocodone|3d.net|v33|brad.com|ambien|xrated|tranny|phentermine|vicodin|credit|canadianlabels|
8gold|texas-hold|hold-em|holdem|fidelityfunding|condo|sportsparent|mortgage|spoodles|money|
cash|hotel|houseofseven|stmaryonline|newtruths|popwow|oiline|flafeber|thatwhichis|tmsathai|pisoc|
crepesuzette|mediavisor|commerce|easymoney|911|////.vi|gb////.com|4free|macsurfer|teen|pussy|
discount|blogincome|lillystar|aizzo|webdevsquare|laser-eye|escal8|xopy|vixen1|linkerdome|
youradulthosting|fick|inkjet-toner|fuck|ime.nu|perfume-cologne|italiancharmsbracelets|
shoesdiscount|psnarones|hasfun|casino|gambling|poker|porn|sex|paris|gabriola|nude|xxx|
hilton|pics|video|adminshop|devaddict|iaea|empathica|insuranceinfo|atelebanon|handy-sms|
peng|just-deals|pisx|rimpim).*" BadReferrer

order deny,allow
deny from env=BadReferrer
Will wait and see if it works, might have to tweak it a bit, note the first section should be all one line, so remove the carriage returns.

There is more info:

Killing Referer Spam
Sample .htaccess file
Block Referer Spam
Referer Spam

So my finished current (tested) .htaccess file looks like so (remember the spam words is all one line):


## shaolintiger.com Anti-spam .htaccess file © 2005

RewriteRule ^.*_$ - [F,L]
Seems to be ok so far, I had to tweak it a bit though as it was giving me an infinite loop somewhere resulting in the famous:

"Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load page requested. This may be caused by the cookies that are blocked."

As for comment spam, I've just enabled it so anyone posting a URL or using HTML will be moderated, but the spammers have gotten smart...they now break the HTML tags onto two lines..so the regex doesn't find it.

Perhaps if I get too many, I'll implement captcha images.

Anyway that's all for now, I'm gonna go delete the spammers from my database..