Livebite, Julpan, Twitter, Wordpress and StatCounter

[JimHarwood]

About 2 months ago I began to notice 'www.livebite.com' showing up as Visit Page for some, Entry Page and Exit Page for others, instead of perhaps Referring URL where I would have expected to find it listed. I know I'm not the only WordPress and StatCounter user to have discovered this. From another, I first learned of the term "piggybacking" for Livebite appearing to be a page at my blog, and found information via Google Search that Livebite is a "bot" with hostile intent - meaning a "spambot" according to some sources.

I found Livebite had just been created in the past month, and until recently was listed at Wikipedia. Now the Wikipedia listing is gone, and so are most Google Search results for Livebite. The Livebite website appeared to be monitoring all kind of news sources and news subjects. I saw no possible means for Livebite to be linked to my blog, or for my blog to be linked to Livebite. Today, the Livebite website is gone, but continues to be showing up in stats. Now, clicking on that 'www.livebite.com' link takes me to a notice page for 'www.julpan.com' and that Twitter has acquired Julpan. The Julpan About page includes profiles of founder and associates, with a Google relationship. Some information there is somewhat disturbing regarding privacy and security of Internet users.

I now believe WordPress has been hacked by them, and that they have found a way to embed Livebite now Julpan into WordPress blogs, resulting in StatCounter showing the violation as I discovered it. Once again, StatCounter has proved to be a priceless tool for discovering potential security threats. I have alerted WordPress. Comments identified as spam by WordPress - the time of those events - match the time of Livebite showing up in stats. Therefore, I conclude Livebite is the source of spam comments. Further evidence indicates they are likewise using Twitter to create hundreds of fake Twitter accounts for the purpose of spam. When I was using gmail, subjects in text would then show up at Twitter from new followers spamming me.

Like when I wrote about water purification filters in a gmail to a friend, then got followers at Twitter trying to sell me water purification filters. So there already was a connection between Google and Twitter. I've been in the process of changing from gmail to Windows Live Mail, and have not had privacy problems with Live Mail. Regarding additional information in StatCounter, the Location of the source of the violations is Seattle Washington, and the IP address is Amazon.com.

However, those stats match the attempted spam comments at my blog, and those have been traced to China and Poland. I'm sharing this recently discovered information here, because I'm sure other WordPress users also using StatCounter might be wondering about 'www.livebite.com' being listed in stats. My blog is expeditiontime.wordpress.com and at Twitter I'm @ExpeditionTime

[CEB12]

Thank you for posting Jim! I have also been seeing 'www.livebite.com' in my Statcounter listings of Popular Page, Entry Page and Exit Page for about two months.

Do you know how to get rid of it? Is it simply a matter of blocking the IP addresses so that my stats appear clean? Or is there a way to really remove livebite from my blog?

I don't currently have comments enabled, but I might want to turn them on in the future and don't want to have to sort through junk comments.

[DNODO]

I've recently had a massive surge in supposed visitors to my blog.

But when I look at the stats in detail (thanks stats counter) ninety percent seem to be me! I mean they give an IP address very similar to mine, and the length of time they're online is pretty much identical to mine (except my own IP address is blocked from the stats). The numbers of these 'mirror images' has been increasing recently, until I'm registering a fairly large number of visitors- only one or two of which are actually real.

I think it's a nastier version of referral spam, but am not sure how to block them.

Any advice welcome. Do I label the IP address, and then hit 'delete' or does that just delete the label?

[Arne]

Originally Posted by DNODO

I've recently had a massive surge in supposed visitors to my blog.

But when I look at the stats in detail (thanks stats counter) ninety percent seem to be me! I mean they give an IP address very similar to mine, and the length of time they're online is pretty much identical to mine (except my own IP address is blocked from the stats).

And you sure it's not your IP's?
If you have a static IP then it may be somebody else, but with a dynamic IP that change very often it's better use the blocking cookie.

Any advice welcome. Do I label the IP address, and then hit 'delete' or does that just delete the label?

You can't delete selectively any hits. You can delete all and the count starts from zero, or just wait until the old hits have rolled out from the stats.