Automated Income? Be careful what you setup...

Discussion in 'General Business' started by RichSage, May 21, 2008.

  1. #1
    Hi All,

    For about a year I left a PHPBB forum installation alone...

    About once a quarter I looked in to see that spammers were inserting automated posts into the forum. I didn't think too much about the porn and drug posts and just went to my other work. I even setup a captcha, which was getting bypassed somehow.

    Today I took a closer look at the content as the traffic had taken off, and was shocked to find what was called teen porn. Well the teens looked very young, or I am getting old. :(

    Anyway, I deleted the forum setup immediately. There were around 20,000 registered forum users and 55,000+ posts. I think any webmaster wouldn't mind such activity in a year or less.

    But, none of it was worth it --very little search traffic. And very few PPC clicks. I suppose I got lucky. Had the Google Adsense team visited the site, they would have vaporized my account.

    Don't let spammers hijack your forums! If you have an installation of a forum that you don't monitor, better check it to see what is happening.

    Sam.
     
    RichSage, May 21, 2008 IP
  2. Dreads

    Dreads Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Good tip ;P
    And its possible that it could of been teen porn.. you never know what these spam bots are up to tehse days.
     
    Dreads, May 21, 2008 IP
  3. mcfox

    mcfox Wind Maker

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    #3
    Sounds like parasite hosting. Thing is, as it's your site and you are responsible for it, no-one is going to believe you didn't do it or facilitate it, if the authorities come knocking at your door.
     
    mcfox, May 21, 2008 IP