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Custom Referral Spam Blocker

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Custom Referral Spam Blocker

by csmicfool

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Description

Custom Referral Spam Blocker gives you the control to ensure that dishonest referral sources are blocked from Google Analytics.

We provide a strong default set of spam referral sources and block them for you. Referrers can quickly be added in moments using the WordPress Dashboard.

At this time, we are unable to block referral spam when used in conjunction with most CDN configurations.

  1. Upload plugin-name.php to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Use the Custom Referral Spam Blocker Settings screen to manage referral sources.
  1. This is the options screen.

    This is the options screen.

If I customize my list and new default sources are added, will my list be updated?

Future versions are planned with improved support for appending to default versus replacing it with your own list.

What is the correct way to add new domains to the block list?

This plugin blocks requests for all pages from a given domain or subdomain. Each domain should be added on a new line. For example, if you add “imaspammerandimok.com” to the list, requests with referrers such as “http://imaspammerandimok.com/spamallnight/spamallday.html” will also be blocked. Do not include the protocol (https://, http://) or path (/folder/page.html) when adding new domains. Subdomains, however, must currently be entered individually.

What happens to the evil spammers?

Their requests are intentionally blocked from continuing to load any WordPress code and get directed away from your site. If they have a puppy, it cries.

The plugin blocks me totally :@ :@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@

By baxter94 on January 22, 2018

This plugin turn my website to 502, don't use it :X.

Not working for all sites...

By marti garaughty (garaughty) on September 3, 2016

Great concept but unfortunately it's not blocking all spam referral sites.

Doesn't Work For Me

By Coalay (chrisparksaz) on September 3, 2016

Wished it worked, but it doesn't. All of the referrer spam I get has long text strings after the domain name -- which seems to circumvent the blocker. So far, it has NOT blocked:

timebie.com
mlizcochico.com
gamezebo.com
keywords-monitoring-your-success.com
notify.bluecoat.com
adishofdailylife.com
wotbox.biz
ana-white.com
free-video-tool.com
techvibes.com
myhomeideas.com
laurenconrad.com
sociableblog.com
grammarist.com
netsidebar.com
gingerhotels.com
fhm.com
bluecoat.com
dobbersports.com
mp3boo.cc

Update: In response to the author's comment(s) below, I have changed my rating to a "5" -- BUT the plugin still does not work for me and I'm still getting referrer spam from the domains listed above. This is not "ghost spam". We're using Rackspace + Cloudflare + WPRocket. I realize that some plugins don't anticipate users with premium assets and are more geared toward budget hosts and basic configurations, but all of the plugins that I use that are dependent on Cloudflare or caching have options in the plugin settings so that they all work together -- regardless of whether or not the user has a cache or a CDN.

So, I'll check back again in a couple of months and try the plugin again.

Just what I needed

By milprod on September 3, 2016

Easy and effective.

Best Referral Spam Blocker Plugin!

By Michaelmcguinness on September 3, 2016

This plugin redirected the spam bots away, never to come back. But there is one small in the fact that it also redirects t.co which is not spam but a twitter referral. If this problem was fixed it would perfect.

No more referral spam

By csmicfool on September 3, 2016

Spammers are immediately redirected away and do not foul analytics. List updates are pushed out very frequently.

I wish Google made it this easy...

By (jonathoncraig) on September 3, 2016

Does one thing and does it right - this plugin BLOCKS REFERRAL SPAM! I couldn't be happier with the regular updates to grow the database which, I believe is the largest in the known universe...

Thanks for making a quality plugin.

Login Redirect Error is fixed

By lajuana27 on September 3, 2016


Custom Referral Spam Blocker Problem

By davemac03me on September 3, 2016

This plugin has locked prevented me from editing within my site... Right after downloading plugin I was unable to work on my site. After clicking anything while signed on this message popped up while loading new page:
Safari Can't Open the Page
Too many redirects occurring trying to open "my site here". This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirected to open the original page.

Please contact me and assist me fixing this issue and I will change the review...

Thx
Dave

Perfect!

By robintel on September 3, 2016

Easy to use, easy to remove the pesky referral advertisers.

0.1

  • Initial release.

0.2

  • Bug fixes.

0.3

  • Added optional data sharing features.

0.4

  • Updated block list

0.5

  • Updated block list

0.6

  • Updated block list

0.7

  • Updated block list

0.7.1

  • Updated block list

1.0

  • Non-destructive referer list upgrade. Adds a more seamless upgrade path when database releases are available. Safely merges custom user-defined spammers with those in the maintained list.

1.0.3

  • Bug fixes for infinite redirects related to short or blank domains appearing in custom block lists. As a result, only exact matches will be blocked and variants will need to be added to lists manually.

1.0.4

  • New remote url for custom list submissions. As we grow, we need to improve our spammer identification and list update tools.

1.0.6

  • Added features to support plugin translation under wordpress standards.

1.0.7

  • Blocklist update.

1.0.8

  • Bugfix to ensure lowercase matches for blocks.

1.0.9

  • Blocklist update.

1.0.91

  • Bugfix for utf-8 character comparison.

1.1

  • New support to help block domains from non-ANSI character sets such as cyrillic or chinese.
  • List update.

1.1.1

  • 2000 download edition!
  • List update

1.1.2

  • Security fix for Multisite.
  • Enables settings for Network Admins only.

1.1.3

  • Improved multisite support.

1.1.35

  • List update
  • Added preliminary whitelist for t.co

1.1.36

  • List update

1.1.37

  • List update

1.1.4

  • List update
  • Bug fix for data sharing issue

1.2

  • List update
  • Bug fix for data sharing issue

1.2.1

  • List update

1.2.3

  • Fixes errors saving settings changes in WPMU
  • Unified site_options list for WPMU

1.2.4

  • List Update

1.2.5

  • List Update

1.2.6

  • List Update
  • 4.5.1 Compatible

1.2.7

  • List Update
  • 4.5.2 Compatible

1.2.9

  • List Update

1.3.0

  • List Update
  • 4.5.3 Support

1.4.0

  • List Update
  • Fixes Multisite Support

1.4.1

  • List Update
  • 4.6 Support

1.4.2

  • List Update

1.4.3

  • List Update
  • cURL timeout fix

1.4.4

  • List Update

1.4.5

  • List Update
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