According to my logs, I’ve had four referrals from http://www.sharpton2004.org/ so far this year. Evidently, Al Sharpton isn’t linking to me – why would his campaign site want to? After all, I’m just a teenager with an insignificant blog in another country.
So, I assumed it was referral spam, and, it looks like I might be right, having found similar entries from J-Walk Blog, Wyome, Doc Searls and even MetaFilter. Apparently it’s not just Sharpton – Joe Lieberman and – gasp – Howard Dean are apparently doing it. If like me, you dispise this practice, add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} StarProse [OR] # Democrat Candidate referral spammer
RewriteRule .* - [F]

That should block the bot – instead of getting your site, they’ll get an Apache 403 (Forbidden) page. You can see how I implemented this in my newly-updated .htaccess file, which also blocks a number of formmail attackers and most email collectors.
Still, if the campaigns really are doing this (and not being framed by someone with an anti-democrat agenda), then someone needs to come around and sort them out. This puts them on a par with viagra merchants, porn peddlers, and fake blogs which allegedly have that sex tape.
Update: as well as those that have trackbacked me, there’s some comments to be found at hebig.com. It’s looking perhaps like Starprose, the company which makes the bot responsible, is doing this for all candidates. However, Lieberman’s campaign team have already denied they have anything to do with it so it may well just be Starprose using the presidential campaign to attract attention to their software. In which case, they desperately need their heads examining.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts