Domain | The Habitation of Justice

Dear Hagopian Hotels: You’re Morons

Lincoln Adams | February 8, 2010 @ 12:05 am

You know, it’s one thing to have a website crucial to your business hacked into, but it’s quite another to let it stay hacked ALL FLIPPING DAY LONG without apparently any of you noticing. Good job! I really feel comfortable now submitting sensitive information to your site when I want to make a reservation. Oh wait… no I don’t.

This is the second time this has happened to me too. I settle on a hotel to stay at, I go to their site to make a reservation, only to find what looks like a parked domain page, except that it isn’t. Instead, some depraved disease spreading spankypants (from Romania I suspect) figures out a way to hack into the site and places code that redirects visitors to a completely unrelated site with a stonking mad truckload of affiliate based links, or worse yet, malicious code that attempts to install a trojan on your computer.

What are these affiliate links you ask? Well it’s simple, every time you click on a link on one of these hacked pages, a cookie gets saved in your browser. The cookie contains certain information that will credit the hacker with a commission if you buy the right product or service, even if it’s months down the road. That’s how they make their money, and the reason why affiliate marketing needs to either be reigned in or die some kind of violent, radioactive death.

I can’t even bring up a cached version of the hotel’s site to compare the difference to the hacked version, but suffice it to say, it was a nice and simple site that had information about the hotel, its history, contact info, parking garage info, and a link to make a reservation. That has now all been replaced, with this:

hacked site containing malware and affiliate links

Things are not what they appear...

I checked the McAfee site rating for the link in that address (don’t go there by the way!) and sure enough, it’s one of the malicious domain names being used to propagate spam and malware.

I sent an email to the real hotel people about this with no response. Beautiful. Fire everyone in your IT department now, because they must be weapons grade numbnuts not to have noticed that the WEBSITE IS GONE. As long as it stays up more visitors will be hoodwinked and might get infected with malware. That’s what cheeses me off too.

Ok, I’m done ranting now. On the upside, the trouble here eventually led me to start an account with Hotels.com instead and use their WelcomeRewards program. I saved $12 in doing so, and now I only need seven more nights to get the next one free. Who’s awesome, baby. :ggrin:

Tags: affiliate links, affiliate marketing, domain, domain names, hacked, hacker, hotel, hotels, malicious code, trojan, website
Categories: Tangled Webs

( Print This Post | | 26 views )

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Loading ...

No Comments »

Invest Two Dollars, Get Back One!

Lincoln Adams | November 30, 2008 @ 7:55 pm

I’ve been spending the weekend exploring ways to bring more traffic to my site, which took me into the brave new world of domains. There’s an industry out there built on the notion that if you purchase enough old domains that once amassed a ton of backlinks and redirect these domains back to your website, it will give your site enough juice to bring in serious traffic.

The problem is, this whole domain business smacks of the stock market and gives me a bloody serious headache. There are literally hundreds of thousands of domains that expire (or are about to expire) every day, and sometimes you have to bid on them if they’re in high demand. Theoretically though, if you invest enough money into enough valuable domains, the dividends will make it worthwhile over the long run. So say I spend $1,000 on domains. If (and that’s a big IF) it brings in enough traffic that I end up making $500 a month in revenues as a result, I will have eventually gotten back what I invested after two months, and then some.

Here’s the thing though: every investment I have ever made in life has been a monumental failure with a capital F. Whether it was school or life or internet projects or relationships or whatnot, whatever I have purported to do in life has always resulted in ultimate FAIL.

So with that kind of batting average, do I really want to spend thousands of dollars grabbing up all kinds of domain names in the hopes that they will collectively bring me the kind of traffic I’ve been looking for?

See, that would work for other people, but not for me. Somehow, the laws of physics and economics all stop at my doorstep. You ever seen the show Lost? Well consider me the island. Once you’re on my shores, you can just forget about everything you’ve ever thought you knew about how the universe worked, because it’s all been rendered moot here. I am a walking wormhole of anomalies, a glitch in the system. :blink:

That’s why I’m kind of hesitant in blowing thousands of bucks on this new experiment, especially when I’m so close to paying off my debts too. I just want this blog to work out so badly, and the more I think about things and about finding another job or another career, the more I’d rather be out of the workforce altogether and be self-sufficient and self-employed, that way I can live anywhere and go anywhere. I don’t want to be stuck at one job in one place forever and ever. I need to MOVE, baby.

So, I don’t know. I think I’m just gonna leave this alone for now, and once all my debts have been squared off, I’ll come back to this and maybe think about making smaller investments instead of going all out, and see if it goes anywhere. I’m just so sick and tired of my 5 visits a day traffic that I’m just chomping at the bit to get SOMETHING going. Gaaaah. :wall: