Comments on: Blocking spam domain referrals with .htaccess http://www.hojohnlee.com/hacks/2006/01/12/blocking-spam-domain-referrals-with-htaccess/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:59:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0 by: Hacks and Gadgets by HJL » Blog Archive » Blizzard of comment and trackback spam http://www.hojohnlee.com/hacks/2006/01/12/blocking-spam-domain-referrals-with-htaccess/#comment-259 Sat, 20 May 2006 18:48:30 +0000 http://www.hojohnlee.com/hacks/2006/01/12/blocking-spam-domain-referrals-with-htaccess/#comment-259 [...] This round of spam seems better implemented than previous ones. The incoming comments and trackbacks are distributed across the entire site, rather than on one or two posts, and are also coming in from a broad set of IP addresses and user agents, which makes it hard to use .htaccess rules for blocking it. [...] […] This round of spam seems better implemented than previous ones. The incoming comments and trackbacks are distributed across the entire site, rather than on one or two posts, and are also coming in from a broad set of IP addresses and user agents, which makes it hard to use .htaccess rules for blocking it. […]

]]> by: veridicus http://www.hojohnlee.com/hacks/2006/01/12/blocking-spam-domain-referrals-with-htaccess/#comment-18 Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:07:27 +0000 http://www.hojohnlee.com/hacks/2006/01/12/blocking-spam-domain-referrals-with-htaccess/#comment-18 Be aware blocking by domain name requires reverse DNS lookup to be on. Otherwise apache only has the IP address to work with. Based on your experience it appears Dreamhost has it turned on. That's surprising because it eats CPU cycles and network traffic. For efficiency most big hosts turn it off. If a host has it turned off and you're using PHP to run your site you can do reverse DNS lookups through PHP code and handle all cases there. Of course this also eats up CPU and network traffic, but for small enough sites it may be worth it. Be aware blocking by domain name requires reverse DNS lookup to be on. Otherwise apache only has the IP address to work with. Based on your experience it appears Dreamhost has it turned on. That’s surprising because it eats CPU cycles and network traffic. For efficiency most big hosts turn it off.

If a host has it turned off and you’re using PHP to run your site you can do reverse DNS lookups through PHP code and handle all cases there. Of course this also eats up CPU and network traffic, but for small enough sites it may be worth it.

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