|
|
|
How To Use Your htaccess File To Keep Spammers Out
pammers have a knack for would typically ignore the wishes
developing “overrides” to of ones’ robots.txtfile they can
even the most secured be banned using the .htaccess
aspect of the system including essentially by identifying the
those that are not readily bad bots.
recognized as potential targets.
The .htaccess file can be used to There is a useful code block that
keep e-mail harvesters away. This can be inserted into the
is considered very effective .htaccess file for blocking a lot
since all of these harvesters get of the known bad bots and site
to identify themselves in some rippers currently existing.
way using the user agent files Affected bots will receive a 403
which gives .htaccess the Forbidden Error when they attempt
capability to block them. to view a protected site. This
usually results to a significant
Spams Countered by .htaccess bandwidth saving and decrease in
server resource usage.
Bad bots are the spiders that are
considered to do a lot more harm Bandwidth stealing or what is
than good to a site such as an commonly referred to as hot
e-mail harvester. Site rippers linking in the web community
are offline browsing programs refers to linking directly to
that a surfer may unleash on a non-HTML objects that are not on
site to crawl and download every one’s own server such as images
one of its pages for offline and CSS files. The victim’s
viewing. Both cases would result server is robbed of bandwidth and
to a jacking up a site’s money as the perpetrator enjoys
bandwidth and resource usage even showing content without having to
up to the point of crashing the pay for its delivery.
site’s server. Since bad bots
Hot linking to one’s own server in this directory will be allowed
can be disallowed with the use of to be listed.
.htaccess. Those who will attempt
to link an image or CSS file on a The .htaccess file is also able
protected site is either blocked to reliably password protect
or served a different content. directories on websites. Other
Being blocked would usually mean options can be used but only
a failed request in the form of a .htaccess offers total security.
broken image while an example of Anyone wishing to get into the
a different content would be an directory must know the password
image of an angry man, presumably and no “back doors” are provided.
to send a clear message to the Password protection using
violators. It is necessary that .htaccess requires adding the
the mod rewrite is enabled on approximate links to the
one’s server in order for this .htaccess file in the directory
aspect of .htaccess to work. that is being sought to be
protected.
Disabling hot linking of certain
file types on a site would need a Password protecting a directory
code to the .htaccess file which is one of the functions of
will be uploaded to the root .htaccess that takes a little
directory or a particular more work than the others. This
subdirectory to localize the is because a file containing the
effect to just one section of the usernames and passwords which are
site. A server is typically set allowed to access the site has to
to prevent directory listing. If be created. It is placed anywhere
this is not the case, the within the website although it is
required link should be stored advisable to store it outside the
into the .htaccess files of the web root so that it cannot be
image directory so that nothing accessed from the web.
rests of the site’s content.
Recommended Practices to Deter
Spam The use of rel = “no follow”
likewise denies the spammers of
Avoiding the publication of their desired page rank at the
referrers is one way of link-level and not just the
discouraging spammers. It would page-level using robots.txt. All
be pointless to bother sending link referrer section of the
spoofed requests to blogs when website linking to external
this information is not known. websites should carry this
Unfortunately, most bloggers attribute. This is done without
believe that being able to click exception so as to offer maximum
on a link such as “sites protection.
referring to me” and the like is
a neat feature and have not Referrer statistics gathered from
evaluated its detrimental effect beacon images loaded via
on the whole blogosphere. JavaScript document, write
statements that are more reliable
If publishing referrers is a than what the raw web server logs
definite must, there should be a will contain. There is an option
built-in support for a referral to totally disregard the
spam blacklist and include the referrer’s section of a site’s
page in robots.txt. It server logs. A cleaner list of
specifically tells Googlebot and referrers can be gathered from
its relatives not to index the the use of JavaScript and beacon
referrer’s page. By doing this, images from referrer stats.
spammers are unable to get the
page rank they seek. This would The current Master Blacklist File
only work however, when referrers can be a powerful and efficient
are published separately from the weapon against spam. A log file
analysis program that filters given site has been identified as
referrers against this list can a referral spam host name,
help root out spam. The Master querying the blacklist again for
Blacklist is a simple text file any IPs with the same host name
that can be downloaded from a in the HTTP request should not be
website or simply mirrored. It is done as a matter of efficiency.
far from perfect since a check on
the file against the referrers There are various forms of spam
that got through shows that few that has grown exponentially
or none of them were listed. along with the popularity of
blogs. This is probably due to
The idea of combating comment the very little restrictions
spam by harnessing DNS-based given against those that can post
black hole lists could also be a comment. This is easily
used to ferret out other forms of exploited by spammers who are
spam such as referral spam. The intent on getting their goods in
proposal is really rather simple front of people’s view. Spammers
and suggests to query the IP have automated tools on a
against a blacklist for a request constant look-out for blogs that
with a referrer. If the IP is can easily be spammed. Spamming
blacklisted or has a high score in all its forms, carry heavy
among a multitude of blacklist, consequences for those trying to
listing the referring URL in any use the Internet and the world
section of a site’s web stats wide web in a productive way.
should be refrained from. Once a
About the Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net
Read more articles by: Danny Wirken
Article Source: www.iSnare.com |
|
