Have you been noticing an annoying referrer showing up in your referrals, with the address of www.starprose.com? I have too, and decided to dig into the site to see why it keeps showing up in my referrals, even though they haven’t referred to my site at all anywhere. It turns out they’re using a program called Referrer Advertising System (RAS), or more accurately, Referrer Spamming System. They go around and spam every site, hoping it’d show up in your referrer script, prompting you to visit whatever site they’ve set.
Quite bluntly, it is another really low, lame attempt, to spam people. It isn’t enough to stoop really low by spamming the comments of blogs, but now they go one small step further, and spam your referral script. It is an indication of just how desperate some people will get for an average of $.002 of a penny for each hit.
Spammers are becoming a lot like press relations managers for corrupt companies. They use semantics to fool people into thinking that what they’re doing is okay. StarProse’s motto is, “Driving the Future of Information”, but it should more realistically reflect what they’re really doing, which is “Driving the Future of Spammers.” It’s sad, really.
Thankfully, there’s a spot in the referral script I use that allows me to block certain sites, IP’s, and so on. Time for me to use it. Be sure to add StarProse to your list as well.
Matt, is there anything actually going to happen about these bottom feeding lowlife’s.
I keep reading about various government moves on both sides of the Atlantic saying they’re going to do something about spamming but as with most government led projects, not a lot seems to develop.
I know you must get a whole inbox full of totally offensive junk mail as well as these constant attacks on your sites and I was just….well consider this a bit of a rant. They drive me nuts as well.
You can be lucky if you don’t get spammed by adult sites …
horai: More and more people are battling spam, and while it is an uphill battle, persistance pays off in the end. If the government won’t step in, the people will. That has always been the way.
Dirk: I won’t complain terribly if adult sites started spamming the comments. I’ll be more than happy to de-spam them in a split second, then add their information to the MT-Blacklist database, so others won’t get spammed by these same people when they use the updated blacklist. :)
Interesting site you have there.