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#46 2005-02-06 02:20:19
- zem
- Developer Emeritus
- From: Melbourne, Australia
- Registered: 2004-04-08
- Posts: 2,579
Re: Automatic Referral spam Blocking.
> Spammers don’t have time – They are in a rush. They will not visit more than one page at a time on your website as it costs them links per hour.
I’m a bit confused by this. At least in the case of referrer spam, it’s common enough to see several bots running on multiple IPs making duplicate hits. (What you say is true for manual comment spam though).
> Spamming is automatic, spending “real user” time on a website costs them time.
Correct (and this is what I mean by “spam equals economics”). Which is why duplicate hits tend to show up: it’s cheaper for them to waste bandwidth than it is to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their bots.
One thing is certain: any anti-spam measure has to have the advantage of leverage. It has to be cheaper and easier for the good guys to improve their filters than it is for the bad guys to overcome them. (That’s why cryptography works: a tiny increase in the cost of encrypting a message makes an enormous difference in the effort required to break it)
Alex
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