I created some themes for MSN Messenger v6.0. Apparently, they are quite popular...my bandwidth allowance from ripplehost was exhausted last month, and this month has already seen well over 60% of my allowance drained.
The server logs showed most were "direct requests". No real info who was downloading from where. So I went into the error logs tonight, and found something interesting...someone was drilling my site trying to find web pages for themes I never created. They were generating 404s for pages like batmanthemes.htm, supermanthemes.htm, lotrthemes.htm (and several other various guessed LOTR URLs). It was kind of sobering. These guys wanted every possible theme I may have created.
I ran some of the IP addresses thru NeoTrace, and pathways were bouncing all over the U.S., and around the world...no direct path to the source. It was weird that one path would go from Seattle, all the way to Philidelphia, south to Texas, west to San Diego and back to the NW in Vancouver B.C. as the originating request.
So I renamed the ZIP files, and updated my web pages to properly download the ZIPs using the new filenames. Sure enough, within an hour my server error logs showed multiple failed attempts to download the old (valid) filenames that no longer existed. It's obvious someone is leeching.
What are some ways to combat this?
The server logs showed most were "direct requests". No real info who was downloading from where. So I went into the error logs tonight, and found something interesting...someone was drilling my site trying to find web pages for themes I never created. They were generating 404s for pages like batmanthemes.htm, supermanthemes.htm, lotrthemes.htm (and several other various guessed LOTR URLs). It was kind of sobering. These guys wanted every possible theme I may have created.
I ran some of the IP addresses thru NeoTrace, and pathways were bouncing all over the U.S., and around the world...no direct path to the source. It was weird that one path would go from Seattle, all the way to Philidelphia, south to Texas, west to San Diego and back to the NW in Vancouver B.C. as the originating request.
So I renamed the ZIP files, and updated my web pages to properly download the ZIPs using the new filenames. Sure enough, within an hour my server error logs showed multiple failed attempts to download the old (valid) filenames that no longer existed. It's obvious someone is leeching.
What are some ways to combat this?
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