By using Google Webmaster Tools, I discovered a new issue that began around Feb 1st 2011. Either a human or a malicious bot (likely a bot, maybe a trojan or virus) has begun grabbing random URLs from my freepages "communities"/websites and placing the links (as broken links) on their "Link Farm" pages. The taken material is either/or/both (1) the freepages specific URL; (2) a line or two of text content; (3) one or two specific images with a page URL but as a broken link. The Link Farms are putting these under topics LIKE _oy-_oy (replace first blank with b and the second blank with t)... or other topics... i.e. topics with double meanings, se*ual meanings, etc. One church website had uploaded only 2 pages themselves, per The WayBack Machine. But they have thousands of new directories/pages of link farms which they didn't know about and were glad I found. Further, I have identified that most of the websites that have the "linked to" content on Link Farm pages are hosted by one company: HostGator. Futher, I have reported to HostGator the websites' that pulled from two of my freepages communities (family and history) and will review my other freepages sites this week and will continue to report all Link Farms to the HostGator company (IF they are the correct hosting company). So I thought I'd let other people know about this. If you have Google Webmaster Tools, look closely at the Crawl Errors section for 404 pages, then look at the specific link and look at what outside website it shows. If the outside website doesn't look like it involves genealogy/history/family history, it may be a Link Farm page. If you don't have Google Webmaster Tools, use Google. Search for Link:your site (link colon your site's URL stopping at the main directory after ~youraccountname/) Then, review the URLs. Most of the bad ones have a weird 2-letter directory after ~youraccount/ then continues with an htm or html filename that makes little sense... like, pansies-chocolate/utter-a-thing.html The file name might contain a date, like 1934. On the page itself, you'll see the real site's banner or navigation (sometimes), then a mixture of text, images, and links, but none really relate to each other as a "topic". That is the Link Farm. Copy both YOUR affected URL and "their" URL (whatever site has your URL on their Link Farm page). Next, when you have "their site" URL, plug it into http://www.allaboutsite.com/ <http://www.allaboutsite.com/%20m> or http://www.whois.net/ It will identify the Hosting Company. If it is a larger or well-known Hosting Company, you can then call their 800 #. I just told the Hosting Company that I wanted to complain about malicious activity on webspace they host; that my URLs were included on pages they host; and that my content/images were put on a Link Farm on their hosted websites. Don't let the Rep try to tell you that anyone can use your content if not copyrighted--- Link Farms are not protected sites and most of us do use copyright on our sites. As well, on my sites I have special permission from several newspaper publishers to re-print their content up through 2000 and that permission doesn't extend to use on Link Farms. Anyway, when you call a Hosting Company, ask them to (1) issue you a ticket and give you the company's tech email address so you can submit your findings to them using that ticket #, and (2) ask them to notify their internal administrator, and (3) ask them to review their servers for pages with broken links containing the path freepages.whichever-community.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~youraccountname One of the biggest issues with this (other than what I've already said), a Web Hosting "server" can be infected by a bot that looks for holes in security, then self-replicates it's Link Farm onto more websites in those servers. Since most of the "websites" I found are hosted by that one company, it's very likely their servers are infected/affected. NOTE: This is NOT a virus or malware that will infect *your* website. The bot is NOT going to get "on" your site -- freepages and rootsweb (ancestry) did NOT cause this -- the bad bot that's grabbing links did it. The big problem is for the Hosting Company, which has to clean out all those files AND find the self-generating malicious file that will continue to generate new pages. Instead for us 'little' webmasters ( from everything I've read ), IF one or more of your URLs from any of your websites gets put on one of these Link Farms, Google could (could, might, maybe) penalize your site as well as the link farm as far as ranking-- it's more of an SEO issue. It's also not fun to be listed on an "ickky" page or among "ickky" topics. I hope this helps others to identify if their URLs are affected and to know one way to deal with it. Lastly, I'm wondering if I should change the URLs (my pages) that these bad people picked? I don't think it will matter much, would it? Should I remove the images they picked, or leave them alone on my site? This is a new area for me. I'd appreciate tips on how others have dealt with the problem. Judy -- -- WASHINGTON COUNTY PA WEBSITES::: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~florian/ Coordinator of the Washington County PAGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pawashin/

Regarding the hosting company (HostGator) that I identified as hosting the websites with bad pages & Link Farms, I submitted two main groups of URLs to them that contained my URLs and content. They wrote back today saying all of the pages I identified have been removed from their servers. The Level 2 Security Administrator at HostGator said to report any more that are found. I still have to check my other websites. If you discover a similar problem with your sites/URLs/content, I encourage you to also report it. HostGator's web has a free 800 number. Just tell them you are not a customer but want to report malicious activity on a website they host. Ask that they assign a ticket number and for the Rep to tell the Administrator. I'm surprised at their fast response. A businessman friend had a similar situation on his website. He used a local hosting company (a small town hosting company). That company kept saying they "eliminated" the source of the problem, but every time they re-started the server, the "garbage" came back onto live (online) websites. It took them 4 weeks to find the virus file and remove it from the server! So, I must say, right now I'm pleased that HostGator took swift action. I'll be checking my other webs through Google Webmaster Tools and will Google site:(mywebsite) and see if I find more. It feels good to defeat the bad guys, even if I just slow them down. Judy