Traffic Stealer?

referring url

[Bridge]

Hi all.

I'm getting entries in my logs like this:

200.30.#*$!.xx - - [18/Aug/2005:05:02:49 +0000] "GET /messages-post-6287.html HTTP/1.1" 200 9294 "http://www.example.com/casino.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Mac_PowerPC; AtHome021)"

Each time the IP is different, even from different countries, but the referring domain remains the same, but a different /page.html on the end.

My site is completely unrelated to casino and gambling, anyone have any advice on this?

[edited by: engine at 10:51 am (utc) on Aug. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[trillianjedi]

Referrer log spam.

See:-

[webmasterworld.com...]

TJ

[larryhatch]

Ofhand, I'd call it log spam.
Referring site(s) simply want to appear in your logs.
The hope is that your access logs will be public (don't do that!) giving the gambling site a free link.
Alternatively, maybe you will visit the site yourself and gamble. Lotsa luck. -Larry

[edited by: engine at 10:50 am (utc) on Aug. 18, 2005]

[Bridge]

That's very helpful, thanks.

Can anyone suggest a possible solution to resolve this?

[Dijkgraaf]

There is very little you can do to stop them as they come from a variety of IP addresses and any blocking you do in .htaccess or the like will still result in entries in your log.
The best you can achieve is to issue them a 403 Denied status and reduce the bandwith they are consuming.
However as long as your logs or summaries there off aren't accessible by bots/spiders/crawlers they don't gain anything from it either.

[flashfan]

Interesting, I don't know robots/spider crawl access log b4.

[larryhatch]

Frankly, I wouldn't waste time trying to do something about this. Its just log spam.
The bandwidth is miniscule for one thing.

Its what NOT to do which matters more:
1) Don't fret about it. Pop a cold beer instead.
2) Do NOT publish your access logs or site statistics. That only encourages them.
3) Don't gamble online. Visit Nevada where you can see the dice at all times. -Larry

[Marcus Aurelius]

You can write a small perl script to rip it out of your logs if it bothers you, should be trivial

[Bridge]

Thanks everyone