I can’t believe that I’m the first to write about this, but nothing else came up on a Google search. I was looking through my referrer logs today and I noticed that I got hit 86 times yesterday from someone supposedly following a link from a website called Jerseyhotels.com (I am not going to link to the page). This strange visitor left only his IP address: 210.192.120.82, which, according to the WHOIS server at APNIC.net, originated in China. Since I highly doubt that the booking page for a hotel site would have linked to me, and that the same person in china would have followed that link 86 times in rapid succession, I am going to go out on a limb and say that I have been spammed. Naturally, I have blocked access to my site from the above IP (the whole subnet, actually), but I’m worried that my interim solution will become untenable as a long-term approach to fighting referrer spam, which ultimately just eats up bandwidth. And money.

More on the offending IP, courtesy APNIC.net: 

% Whois data copyright terms    http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html

inetnum:      210.192.96.0 - 210.192.127.255
netname:      CHINANETCENTER
descr:        ChinaNetCenter Ltd.
descr:        Internet Service Provider
descr:        China
country:      CN
admin-c:      XW53-AP
tech-c:       KJ17-AP
mnt-by:       APNIC-HM
mnt-lower:    MAINT-CHINANETCENTER
remarks:      Transfer from AUNET-AP
changed:      hm-change@apnic.net 20020827
status:       ALLOCATED PORTABLE
source:       APNIC

person:       Xu Mingwei willy
address:      Fl.7,China Overseas Building, No.398,Mid,Huaihai Rd.,
address:      Shanghai
country:      CN
phone:        +86-21-63849866-703
fax-no:       +86-21-63849899
e-mail:       willy@chinanetcenter.com
nic-hdl:      XW53-AP
mnt-by:       MAINT-NEW
changed:      willy@chinanetcenter.com 20000911
source:       APNIC

person:       Kang kai jim
address:      Fl.7,China Overseas Building, No.398,Mid,Huaihai Rd.,
address:      Shanghai
country:      CN
phone:        +86-21-63849866-701
fax-no:       +86-21-63849899
e-mail:       jim@chinanetcenter.com
nic-hdl:      KJ17-AP
mnt-by:       MAINT-NEW
changed:      jim@chinanetcenter.com 20000911
source:       APNIC

Damn, I hate spam. Money-grubbing f&*ks have to go and ruin everything nice.

NP: Johnny Cash, I Walk The Line