I manage a very simple Internet site, consisting from a home page with links to a lot of secondary pdf and htm files. The counter on my homepage shows, according to the season, about 200-500 hits per day, but the use of monthly bandwidth is no more than 5% of the allotted by the hosting service, and the total used hosting volume is even less. The site is popular in my country and several sites of similar character include a link to my address on their pages.
Among the services supplied by the hosting company is a list of the ten last referrals. This service is not very important for me, but I check, from time to time, the referring sites.
Lately I found that a certain URL appears constantly in the referrals list, sometimes clogging it completely for 5 – 10 minutes (i.e. 5-10 referrals from the same site in 10 minutes).
I checked with the hosting service support and they believe that a spider or bot is using my site as a launching point.
I found the IP of the clogging URL and advised their abuse service, but no action was taken and the address continues to appear on the referrals list.
I am looking for some explanation of the "launching point" process and I would like to understand if such process can influence in any way the working of my site, and if so, how to get rid of it.
Please explain or direct me to some articles on this matter
Thanks

Hi idr. Your problem caught my attention from a security standpoint - though sadly, I don't know what piece of hardware needs fixing. I am not sure this is the best forum to get the right eyes looking - I will ask about if someone with experience running a website can offer some advice as to your next move.

In the meantime...

It might help to know what country, in case local laws are different.

I checked with the hosting service support and they believe that a spider or bot is using my site as a launching point.
I found the IP of the clogging URL and advised their abuse service, but no action was taken and the address continues to appear on the referrals list.

Just to clarify, do you mean "hosting service" as in the company that owns the hardware that runs the software for the website you manage? I don't want to confuse "hosting service" with ISP - your Internet Service Provider. Your ISP may not be able to help, but it seems (to me - and again, not my area) your hosting service would want you to be happy, and would help you.

Did they refuse to help you further? It seems they could simply block, or help you block it, or help positively identify the source as friend or foe. The badguys, if that is the case, may reconfigure and do it again, but that would sure seem like clear evidence of malicious activity, and not just a fluke.

My confusion comes from them saying a spider or bot is using "your" site. Who owns, and who has physical possession of the hardware where your site's data files are stored and served?

From a network security issue, this seems like a piece of cake to deal with - but I just fix the hardware, I don't know how to run it so perhaps someone else who has experience running websites may be able shed some light on what your next steps should be.

Thanks Digerati
The problem (if it is really a problem) has nothing to do with the Internet provider for my computer here. When writing “hosting Service” I meant the company where my site is stored. As I said already, I asked them and their answer was:
“This is often caused when your site is linked somewhere and a spider or bot is using that as a launching point. Regretfully we cannot fix this as the requests have validly come from this location according to the web server logs.“
The annoying URL is huberheights.co.il/philo-4.htm] and its IP is some company called Liquidweb.com. I advised them but didn‘t receive any answer.
The huberheights site has nothing to do with my site, it is, as I understand, some portal, which character and purpose I do not understand.
Really I don‘t know if there is any problem. I don‘t mind the clogging of the referrals list, but on the other hand I wouldn‘t like that my site serves to some irregular or spam performance.
Yochanan

Really I don‘t know if there is any problem. I don‘t mind the clogging of the referrals list, but on the other hand I wouldn‘t like that my site serves to some irregular or spam performance.

Agreed. But even if this is not malicious, you don't want the problem grow so that your legit referrals are blocked.

Liquid Web is the other's hosting service it would appear. Huberheights appears to be an Israeli site - good or bad, I don't know.

Who did you complain to, Liquidweb or huberheights? I think liquidweb should be who you ask for help from .