Rui Carmo(a three-step guide - Warning, some URLs are not work-safe)
- Steal Another Site's Bandwidth (some asshole was auctioning Nokia/9500s on eBay using my cached images - even when I go to the trouble of preserving original image URLs and references...)
- Create Fake Yahoo Account Profiles and use that URL for Referrer Spam
- Use Lame TLDs like .name, .biz or .info and use that URL for spamming as well.
Being utterly fed up with referral spam and people trying to suck out my photos or inline images (which, by the way, are compressed as much as I can, because I have a puny ADSL link) I went and modified my referrer checks, which now return a small warning image:
I've temporarily added Bloglines to my .htaccess file, if only because they generate a lot of my traffic. But all users of web-based aggregators are encouraged to read this and either take 20 minutes to code the first bit of it into their aggregators or suggest it to their aggregator service.
I will also look again into bandwidth throttling, since I need to throttle down avid photo fans during the evenings (sorry, but everyone else needs to have a go, and I need to have Internet access too) and tarpit the morons that keep trying to get their URLs listed on the Referrers page.
And now, for our moment of Zen: a proof of patience if I ever saw one (thanks to João Antunes for the link).