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How to block traffic from spy tools! (11)

02-20-2013 10:48 AM #1 thechintanshah (Member)
How to block traffic from spy tools!

hey guys, Chintan Shah here.

I was getting pissed from all the traffic I was getting from spy tools. So I did a quick search and you can block the user from its referral domain in .htaccess

So here is the code:

RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} badsite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
And guys keep the \ preceding the . as it is. So suppose you wanna block traffic from facebook.com.
It should be facebook\.com and [NC] indicates non case sensitive.

Hope it helps people

02-21-2013 05:50 AM #2 vipinext (Member)

but most spy tools blank the referrer, so you never know whether the traffic is coming from, how to work on that ?

02-21-2013 11:10 PM #3 blockis (Member)

I take in the referrer on all of my LPs, and I have it so the referrer has to be filled, and be from the network that I'm running my advertisements on, everyone else sees something else. I lose a bit on blanked referrers, but it's worth it.

02-22-2013 10:29 AM #4 caurmen (Administrator)

Good tip!

One thing to watch out for, though - Rewrite_engine has a tendancy to slow servers down. I'd run a Pingdom check with and without the Rewrite rule in your .htaccess, just to make sure it's not hurting your load times.

02-23-2013 05:40 AM #5 thechintanshah (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by caurmen View Post
Good tip!

One thing to watch out for, though - Rewrite_engine has a tendancy to slow servers down. I'd run a Pingdom check with and without the Rewrite rule in your .htaccess, just to make sure it's not hurting your load times.
Didnt know this. Wil have a check soon.

02-23-2013 05:41 AM #6 thechintanshah (Member)

And in my case have only seen adultadspy.com and so referral being there I block it.

10-29-2013 05:23 PM #7 auditor (Member)

Is there a list of known culprits ?
There are now dozens of spy tools on the market, and I'm sure their spiders trawl under a different domain than eg:
Whatrunswhere.com,
Adclarity.com,
Ad beat.com,
Follow.net,
Etc, etc.

10-29-2013 06:10 PM #8 getzlaf15 (Member)

The blanker referer is good, you can send that traffic to a "generic" lander that you don't care if they copy. So you
will still get conversions.

10-29-2013 07:34 PM #9 stackman (Administrator)

^ or send to a realistic lander to fool whomever thinking thats your bread winning landing page.

10-30-2013 04:18 PM #10 leeches (Member)

How would you setup to send all traffic that lands on a specific URL or even better a folder on a domain to be redirected if it was not from the referrer you are driving traffic from?

10-30-2013 04:24 PM #11 Smaxor (Veteran Member)

Typically best to redirect to the offer page like you're running direct linked.

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