YJL

Assuming this referrer is truly from Scansafe.


I don't know how this Scansafe works, are they trying (or their client) or have they blocked that page for some reason? If so, for what? And I can't find a way to check up on their website. By the way, their website has a big chuck Flash.

Because it is a referrer, therefore someone must be viewing that page and its URL is that looooooooooooooong. Only a few days ago, I posted about not so good URLs, Google Search's is long, but this Scansafe's is a real champion.

I have to mask portions of the screenshot, I didn't try to decrypt it, but someone maybe want to and they maybe own malicious websites, which certainly will be qualified dangerous website and whoever uses Scansafe will check out. It is like reverse-honeypot.

That cryptic long text may contain encrypted sensitive information or not, but I will guess it does not. You hardly will see URL mis-include sensitive information nowadays.

There is one more thing is strange, that is HTTP. I think HTTPS will not be sent in referrer header. I am not sure about this, never thought about this part, have to check the spec. or something. Anyway, Scansafe is a security product, then how come it is only a HTTP connection when a client needs to be ensured with the maximal security while they are using Scansafe website?

Of course, the stuff above is assuming the referrer is legitimate. What if it is not, it is bogus? Then the question is who sent that and why.

If it was sent by Scansafe for whatever testing or checking purpose, then they become bad bots; if it was sent by someone else, then what's the purpose to impersonate Scansafe? Which I don't have an answer for that.

Off-topic: What is a good way to block by specific Referrer on Blogger? Seems that JavaScript is the only way. But it is not real blocking, but masking content when certain referrer is matched.

I always want to know who links to my blog, so I check referrer data in Blogger Stats and Google Analytics report, also set up Google Alerts. I even search for this blog's domain name to see if there is any new hits. (Use "Past 24 hours" time range, it's very useful)

But it doesn't seem to be enough for me. They always seem to be missing some links from those methods, the Alerts hasn't even got me anything for a long time.

In Webmaster Tools, you can download a CSV of link-ins by clicking a button "Download more sample links" (so, this is not complete?) in Your site on the web / Links to your site / Who links the most "More ". (Lost?)

It is a list of external links which has links to your site. Since it is long, there is no humanly way to know which are new links.

So, I wrote a simple Bash script to do the job, run it with CSV files as arguments.


You can run it with CSV files of different websites, it has no problem with that. Once the CSV files are processed, they are safe to remove. You only need to keep the first two files in the last file list in the screenshot above.

This script has a few predefined regular expression to filter out some common duplicate URLs, such as WordPress's and Blogger's archive or index-like pages. You really want to see is the posts which has link to your website in its content.

I just spent around 30 minutes to click on profiles on Google Plus, trying to find some profiles who has Blogger blogs listed in Contributor to section. But I can't find one, even Blogger's Plus.

I have been seeing a few traffic from Google Plus (http://plus.url.google.com/...) and the URL link attached to that referral link is FeedBurner's. So, it's clear to me someone was able to click a link from my blog's feed on Google Plus.

But I have never posted my blog posts on Plus when I published a new post, so it can't be me, can it? And that might not be a link via FeedBurner but a direct link, not sure what Blogger will put in the Plus post for the blog post link.

Anyway, it's not me after 30 minutes of trying to find a profile. I was thinking to add a profile to a circle (follow?), so I can see what it is, well, actually, I have no idea anything about Plus. I just want to reproduce by finding a profile like mine.

I didn't find one, but finally I realized that I could just search for the post title, then I found the source. It was someone who shared via Google Reader. Duh, all mysteries are solved at once.

Google Reader uses my FeedBurner feed and it can post on Plus when you want to share, which I stop using because I don't want to share on Plus. I used to add my comments, but since Google started pushing and squeezing everything of Google into that 4-letter word P-L-U-S, I don't like doing so any more.

During the profile hunting, I saw a few posts are about programming. Some of them have code included. Heck! That's just like reading NASA launch procedure programming code in variable-width text. It's gonna crash, at least in my brain. And...

Wait, where was I? Oh, right, the referrer thing...

So, what does this post tell you?

Simple, only two things:

1. I wasted 30 minutes on clicking profiles.
2. You just wasted 3 minutes on reading this post.

A few days ago, I was sarcastic about .ua is free. Today, I still saw the same.


I sent a feedback to Blogger via that gear icon on top-right corner. By the way, the feedback functionality is awesome. You can grab a region for screenshot. I wish Blogger had put in more time and effort to deal with spams before then added this awesome feature.

Anyway, I told them in my feedback: They need to create a report functionality and filter out throughout the entire Blogger Stats (not just the blog), and write a serious post about it to warn the spammers. Something like "Spam is futile, you will be assassinated." (Alright, I didn't send the last part, I just came up with that, could I add it to my feedback?)

I also noticed one of top posts is Fake referrers invade Blogger Stats, make great sense, doesn't it?

That post was posted almost one year ago, so when the Stats was released, and the spam issue is still here. If I may say, it only gets worse. When I posted that, I only got one or a couple every a while. But now, it happens in every hour.

The statistics is filled with fakes, I have learned long ago, never trust what Blogger Stats gives to you. That number is not what you think, that's visits from real human or legit bots. That's why I said "not accurate" in title.

Please send a feedback or post to their help forum. If you also know any existing threads about this issue, post a link, I will go to thumb up. Hopefully, Blogger will take it seriously then.

(So tired of this as you can see that I don't even bother to mask those spams' links anymore)

It seems spammers are trying everything they can think to get more expose, not just simply using a website. They are using media as well.

The screenshot above shows a YouTube videos referrers, on top of that, in that blue box, its a screenshot from this blogs referrers. The YouTube video link links to that video, which is about casino. From YouTube stats, you can see there were $4+23=27$ visitors from blogger.com, I believe they are all targeted Blogger bloggers. When I first saw that referrer in Stats tab of dashboard, 99.999% I was sure its faked since no way anyone would link my blog in their videos descriptions or comments. But I still clicked on it to check it out. You can also see it has 303 likes and I bet they are all faked, too, but those 5 dislikes, I am certain that they are real ratings.

I was thinking to flag that video, but I couldnt. There is no suitable option to file an complaint, it makes sense. Someone might use this to attack normal video, in other words, we have to take this kind of spamming. Too bad, there is no Spam folder as in Gmail.

I have to quote this:

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years time. Bill Gates.

I really wish he was right. That was in 2004. Six years later, they are still around. Currently, if you dont see, they are just being hidden by algorithm. They are detected and put into spam folder. Thats sad, because what needs to be done is to find who sends not to write some sophisticated program to detect, those companies fight back in wrong direction. They keep saying how many they have done. The truth is they dont, they just cover our eyes.

Collecting evidence and help to charge those spams. Say one spam mail for just one minute community service, that would definitely be enough.

Since Blogger pushed new feature of Stats, I began to see more fake referrer in Stats tab or Google Analytics. Fake referrer is very common spam, but Blogger Stats needs you doing nothing to read the statistics. It's convenient for bloggers and spammers.


Those people who create crappy website have targeted us now. If it spams not only for traffics, but also try to hack into your computer, that would be very bad.

Don't click on any referrers that you have no idea what they are. I hate spammers!

The day before yesterday, I saw about a dozen hits in Woopra on this blog.


It's easy to guess that all are faked. It's no way to have same path, the navigation bar of Blogger.com, within 45 minutes. Amazingly, the faker can poke from so many different places and I think those are compromised computers.

Here is another report from MyBlogLog free stats:


It's interesting to see no any reports from Google Analytics. I wonder if Analytics already wiped those fake attempts out or it was just broken?