Stopping Spam Referrers
-
There is a growing problem of links to dubious websites being included in the ‘Referrers’ box in the Site Stats. Until such time as it becomes possible to stop these links being added it might be better not to show the ‘Referrers’ box in the stats. If there are no links visible for us to click on the spammers will soon lose interest and leave us alone.
-
I imagine most of our users would be quite upset if we hid the referrer stats. :)
Referrer spam bots act indiscriminately, just like comment spam bots, and many are often left by legitimate visitors who are unknowingly using malicious browser add-ons.
In short, the bots will never know if we’re hiding the stats.
At this time, we’re actively filtering out whatever we can find ourselves, so please report any referrer spam that you see via http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
-
-
The most notorious spammer is the one whose referrals end in co.cc and redirect you to a site that deceptively purports to be a source for finding a car loan. This spammer accounts for more than half of the hits on my blog every day. Using DomainTools, I identified the host for the spammer’s commission-earning site to be:
[personal information redacted by sl1k]
I would encourage everyone to verify this information for themselves and then complain to the hosting service. Don’t click on the links themselves. I type them in manually into a hardened Linux system that leaves no trace, and thus no financial benefit for the spammer.
-
-
Staff are acting on this. This situation is merely an annoyance. It does not affect your blog’s standing with Google in any way.
Staff have created a filtering system. They have requested that we do not click the spam refferer links because that is what the spammers want us to do. They have also requested that we do not post any referrer information into forum threads, but instead that we report all spam reffer links directly to them. If you have not reported the links directly to Staff please do that now. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
-
Thank you for that, timethief. I’ve taken on board what you’ve said and have reported all yesterdays links. Tomorrow I’ll report today’s links, and so on.
-
-
-
Hi all, now there are referrers who are simply called “Other Sources”. Is this where the links go that have been filtered out? The stats are still affected though… Thanks for helping! tms
-
-
Adding my two-cents to the topic . . .
Some of the referrer SPAM is also being disguised using URL shortening services such as: http://tiny.cc, http://bit.ly, http://ow.ly, etc. — so don’t be fooled by the shortened URL’s.
As timethief has posted to other similar threads on this topic, don’t include referrer SPAM URL’s in any of these threads or click on them. It give these spammers exactly what they want: extra traffic to their bogus sites. Simply report them to staff.
-
@fullfrogmoon
Please re-frame from posting personal information in the public forums I went ahead and removed their address and phone number etc,S^K
-
Staff is requesting all spam referrer links to be sent to this email address support@wordpress.com while their gone for the week
- The topic ‘Stopping Spam Referrers’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 