Mint Forum

I’m starting to get hit with referrer spam (not the microsoft/live/phx issue from this summer, see this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam). I understand the principle but my Mint installation is not public. You can’t get to it without a password.

is the solution as simple as putting index-no-crawl in my mint directory?

I am getting dozens and dozens of searches for prescription drugs showing up in my referrer logs. it started out as just a few, but the number is going up every day. it increased so drastically that I was convinced someone had hacked into the site and created pages that had these search terms on them. of course that was not the case.

i know that referrer spam is an old problem but it was not a problem i had ever had until recently.

the terms are varied and not consistent and not all coming from the same IP address, writing a filter to keep up with it would be a full-time job. but it’s crowding out valid referrers.

Just to clarify, you aren’t seeing actual referrer spam (when another unrelated site, other than a search engine, appears to link to your site but isn’t really) but search spam (when search results for spammy words appear to link to your site but don’t really). That doesn’t make it any less annoying, but clarity helps in diagnosing and solving the problem.

An example of the terms and their urls would be most helpful.

Are these terms showing up in your Searches pane or just the Referrers pane?

i have checked with my host. there is no sign of compromise. i’ve been advised to stdart by looking at .htaccess and then mint.

i uninstalled mint and it has completely hosed my site. completely. I don’t understand how, but it has. i followed the instructions, deleted the files, removed the reference in .htaccess.

it seems i’ve started to have the same problem. i realized in my referral logs in my cpanel that a lot of hits were coming from my mint dir. as if a spambot was installing pages all under the /mint/app/paths/install/.misstat/ folder. i google dears.net/mint and i got results pointing to these pages that dont seem to exist. my mint is private and not viewable by public either. it was getting so bad that i’ve getting hit with like 80 of these invisible pages at a time. i had to temporary delete my mint folder. any idea why this is could happening or maybe it has nothing to do with mint?

example :

/mint/app/paths/install/.misstat/casino325.html
    Http Code: 404  Date: Oct 06 06:22:04   Http Version: HTTP/1.1  Size in Bytes: 8007
    Referer: -
    Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; CollapsarWEB qihoobot@qihoo.net)

/mint/app/paths/install/.misstat/casino326.html
    Http Code: 404  Date: Oct 06 06:22:12   Http Version: HTTP/1.1  Size in Bytes: 8007
    Referer: -
    Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; CollapsarWEB qihoobot@qihoo.net)

/mint/app/paths/install/.misstat/casino327.html
    Http Code: 404  Date: Oct 06 06:22:31   Http Version: HTTP/1.1  Size in Bytes: 7741
    Referer: -
    Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; CollapsarWEB qihoobot@qihoo.net)

I haven’t looked at myMint for a week or so, but I checked it 5 minutes ago and even though it’s not public, it’s been plastered with vile keywords. Not going to repeat them here but take every spam email subject line you’ve ever seen that includes hints at every type of fornication known to man and woman, bunch them up and paste in every area in the “Minterface”, above the real data, and you get an idea. I have no idea how they got it in there — hacked the database? As I said, my Mint is not public, it’s password protected.

Question is a) how do I get rid of it, short of napalming the db and reinstalling everything? and b) how the f*** did the f***ers get their crap in there?

Shaun — if you need it I can send a screengrab it’s probably more illuminating than my poor description, but I won’t post it here.

Help, thanks?