Are embedded sponsor codes causing you RSS feed problems?

cd34 · 2006-09-13, 01:32 AM

be very very careful that you don't convert any urls that send traffic to ccbill. Their refer.cgi doesn't properly de-entify and while your page will validate, you won't get credit for the surfers.

Request sending & in the url

Code:

mcd@tsavo:~$ telnet refer.ccbill.com 80
Trying 64.38.240.20...
Connected to refer.ccbill.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=xxxxxx-0000&amp;PA=xxxxxx HTTP/1.0
Host: refer.ccbill.com 

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:25:21 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com
Content-Length: 212
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>302 Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Found</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>
Connection closed by foreign host.

Result sending a url that doesn't validate:

Code:

mcd@tsavo:~$ telnet refer.ccbill.com 80
Trying 64.38.240.20...
Connected to refer.ccbill.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=xxxxxx-0000&PA=xxxxxx HTTP/1.0
Host: refer.ccbill.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:26:35 GMT
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: xxxxxx=CLICKS2wRqJElQncJQ*; expires=Friday 15-Sep-06 22:26:39 GMT; path=/; domain=.ccbill.com
Location: http://www.xxxxxxxxxxx.com
Content-Length: 212
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>302 Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Found</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>
Connection closed by foreign host.

Note that the second non-entified url properly sets the cookie, while the first gets you to where you are expecting, but, doesn't set the cookie or give you credit.