Geeklog Forums

OK, I have been getting just about a 1000 entries a day in my HTTP_Referrer log from spam sites. They can't comment or anything, all that is locked out, but it is getting difficult to track my true traffic with the number of SPAM entries I am getting. The mass majority of it seems to be from online Poker sites. How do I make an entry in Spam-X to just block any referrer link that contains the word "Poker"?

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Luhme summa dat GL.

Spam-X doesn't block referrer spam - it's for comment spam. Have a look at Bad Behavior instead.

And if the poker spam you're seeing is coming from where I think it's coming, then Bad Behavior will take care of that out of the box.

bye, Dirk

Thanks, Dirk, installing now...

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Luhme summa dat GL.

Bad Behavior works like a charm! Ten minutes to install, (and that was with me mis-spelling a folder name). Few minutes later, I have 22 clean HTTP Referrers, and 55 entries in the BB log, all dirty. w00t!

Now...is there no clear log function, and does that have to be done manually?

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Luhme summa dat GL.

Old entries are deleted automatically after a week.

bye, Dirk

Hey Dirk,
I noticed that Bad Behaviour is treating Googlebots like spammers. Does that prevent Google from indexing those pages, and is there anyway to modify "allowed" agents?

Edited to add: Not just Google, all the search engine bots. This could be a serious deal breaker.

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Luhme summa dat GL.

Figures. I will just trust it to do it's job. Thanks for all you do Dirk. I think I have thrown a dozen questions at you, and you have been on it. I really appreciate it. My site wouldn't be the same running on a different CMS. (I know this for a fact, as GL was the 5th one I tried). I have another site running Mambo, which is fine for what it is, but GL is my primary platform from now on.

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Luhme summa dat GL.

Actually, Bad Behavior is known to block one legit bot: YahooSeeker. That's because the bot isn't really sending proper HTTP requests. YahooSeeker is Yahoo's bot specifically for shopping sites. So this would only affect you if you're selling things on your site. If you do, you can always whitelist it (see bad-behavior-whitelist.php).

The normal Yahoo bot (Slurp) is not affected.

I'm using Bad Behavior on almost all of my Geeklog sites now and - with the exception of YahooSeeker - have yet to see a "false positive", i.e. a case where it blocked a legit request. Usually checking the IP address or having a closer look at the actual HTTP request will make it clear that the blocked request was actually fishy.

Btw, if you have Tom Willet's NetTools installed, you can look up IP addresses directly from the Bad Behavior logs (also see the $_CONF['ip_lookup'] config.php option).

bye, Dirk