Comments on: The Reffy spammers - update

By: Ann Elisabeth

Ann Elisabeth — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:27:32 +0000

It’s their nameserver, so yeah, there’s a connection.

By: pjm

pjm — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 14:54:07 +0000

Oh, the Reffy folks have been nagging me for months. Since last August, at least, starting with webdevboard.com spam and then the adminshop spam and including xopy as well. See this post http://www.flashesofpanic.com/panic/000413.php and the comments for that history; it was my first case of referer spam. Note in the comments that someone linked them to the whiteguysgroup dot com domain, which sounds even more Nazi than what you’ve found.

This guy http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/09/06/reef-v10-free-referrer-spam-tool/ was sufficiently annoyed that he… created a free referrer-spam tool to try to undercut their business. (Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.)

By: Ann Elisabeth

Ann Elisabeth — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 16:30:28 +0000

And notice how that domain is hosted at esthost…

I can’t find any prior listings for the IP number, though. Could be they’re doing it from an account at splitinfinity {dot} net?

Could you send them an abuse message? And include the log entries.

By: alfons

alfons — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 16:08:53 +0000

Reffy has a rival:

130.94.135.216 - - [30/Jan/2005:18:00:34 +0100] “POST /~arthur/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=773 HTTP/1.1″ 302 306 “http://www{DOT}php{DASH}soft{DOT}com” “”

Note their impertinent “Perfect submission engine for messages boards, guestbooks, blogs and other scripts with different submission form structure.” on their home page.

By: Ann Elisabeth

Ann Elisabeth — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:28:53 +0000

That IP number has a Squid server on it. Could just be a proxy. Not sure it’s an open proxy, though. It could be an ISP specific proxy. Either way, send the abuse message.

By: S-PAN

S-PAN — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:13:45 +0000

Looks like old reffy got a new IP address. Stuff is showing up from IP address: 220.244.224.171

Looks like some Australian internet provider. They have a link for abuse:

http://www.tpg.com.au/about/enquiry.php?type=Report%20Spamming

inetnum: 220.244.0.0 - 220.245.255.255
netname: TPG-AU
descr: TPG Internet Pty Ltd.
country: AU
admin-c: TH178-AP
tech-c: TH178-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP)
remarks: http://www.tpg.com.au

By: How Now, Brownpau?

How Now, Brownpau? — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 08:10:11 +0000

Adminshop, Reffy, and Referrer Log “Marketing”

(A note to companies thinking of resorting to referrer log marketing: don’t. It’s annoying and unethical, it has little effect on your search engine rankings…

By: Dave's Chalkboard

Dave's Chalkboard — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 22:34:37 +0000

Referral spam generator

Reffy - reffy dot net (I won’t even come close to giving them a link!)
Reffy dot net is dedicated to exposing the exciting potentialities of referrer marketing, a field that was pioneered with the powerful windows-based tool named Reffy, which we sell…