Perl Spoof Script for HTTP_REFERER protection
I recently was searching for something that I could use with Apache to modify the referrer from my administration section on one of my websites. Not claiming to know much about Apache & what it can do, I searched for hours and came up with nothing.
The whole point in me modifying the referrer was to not show my administration URL’s in other webmasters’ logs, not to send referer spam across the globe & mess with website statistics. When I was thinking about another way to approach this problem, I thought of a spoof script. After another few hours of searching and testing on my local machine I came up with something that would work out well. I could click on a link in my administration area and visit a website without my administration section links showing up in server logs.
Referer Spoofing & Referer Spam: Why is this on the incline?
I check my visitor logs daily via awstats, and every day I get more “referrer spoofed” websites. I can see maybe that this would get you a few extra hits a day, but I can’t imagine any great monetary gain from something like this.
Protect yourself from fake (spoofed) emails
I get several emails a week from websites claiming to be PayPal or eBay telling me that if I don’t respond quickly they will suspend my account. It’s unfortunate that probably a lot of people fall for this. There is a very simple way to eliminate the possibility of being taken by these scam artists.