If you've been keeping an eye on your website traffic with Google Analytics (GA4) you may have noticed a sudden increase in referral traffic from Poland. At a glance, it may seem that your website has become an overnight sensation in Poland. However the traffic appears to be spam from bots, coming from a few different domains hitting your website ever few minutes in short sessions.
What is Happening
At this time, it seems as though there is an exploit in GA4 that allows Google Analytics tags to be hit directly which creates spam referral data. None of that spam referral traffic is making it through to your website, it's just skewing your GA4 data.
This spam attack can happen to anyone with GA4, regardless of their web-host. There are no public statements from Google about the issue or an official solution as of 02/27/24.
There are a number of open threads at this point in Google Analytics' support forums from GA4 users experiencing similar spam referrals.
What You Can Do
Currently, we are waiting on word from Google about a potential solution for this issue. Regularly checking the GA4 Support Forums will be the best source of information as this topic becomes increasingly popular there.
Here is a possible solution that some users have reported to have worked for them:
⚠️ This solution has been identified to not work for some users, and some have been reported it to only temporarily work.