what's this in my logs? - try to use me as a proxy?

[minkas]

What does a line like the following in my log-file mean?

"ac95984b.ipt.aol.com - - [13/Jan/2002:12:46:14 +0200] "GET

http://db.smutcash.com/click.php?aid=941565217&bid=0&sid=25

HTTP/1.1" 404 373 Mozilla/4.5 [en] (Win98; I)

http://www.xxxteenstream.com/members/partners/"

My site is NOT

http://db.smutcash.com/

!

I have such kind of logs mainly with porn sites as referers. Do they try if they can use me as a proxy or what? They receive all the time answer 404, but they continue ...
I'd like to know what do they do?

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

The general idea with those things is to make money. Some of these sites use 'referral' programs that pay commissions so the idea is to dupe as many suckers as possible to click on links or ad banners that have your membership id embedded and therefore get more cash. There are plenty of warez, etc., sites around that are at least partly funded this way. I guess the next step would be to auto-generate the 'clicks' somehow rather than rely on human intervention. What you are seeing is probably the result of a program that sends proxy requests to whole series of IP addresses automatically. Why ? I'd guess the same as you - if that IP address happens to be a proxy server (and apache can act as a proxy server) then the urls would be retrieved and more 'clicks' achieved. Just look at -->

http://www.smutcash.com/

.

Regards

 

[Guest_imported]

I have the same problem.
Can I do something to stop this.
Thanks