need webmaster help!

ellen abbott · Post by **ellen abbott** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 7:03 pm

I am having an unusual problem with my website that I have no idea what to do about. I use the Urchin software to track my web stats and I had been averaging 400 - 800 visitors a week. Last December, the week of the 19 - 25, I had nearly 10,000 visitors registered in the stats. It gradually declined and was starting to get more normal, but I have had a new spike. The last week of March, I had nearly 3,000 visitors. As nearly as I can tell, all these hits were connected to a chat room or message board hosted by yahoo and to some extant msn. With the exception of my average visitors referred from souces I recognise, none of these 'visitors' were actually looking at my website as further in the stats it will give you that information. Upon further exploration in my web stats as provided by urchin, I discovered that they are arab chatrooms or boards and lots of other dot whatevers. Checking the domains/top countries stat I see that every arab country is represented as well as any country with a sizable muslim population. Again, they aren't looking at my web site. I've gone to some of the domains and they are all in arabic. I've tried to contact yahoo to no avail and msn as well. I don't belong to any chat rooms and only a few glass related message boards. I've tried to go the the specific 'message address' at yahoo and msn and get an error message. Beside the fact that it messes up my true web stats, I seem to be attracting the attention of the US Gov't who had visited my web site 5 times in the past week and has many pages per visitor listed. I'm not liking this.

Can anyone tell me how my site has gotton linked to these groups? How can I get it off there? Is it possible to lock out visitors from certain domains?

E

Pam · Post by **Pam** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:18 am

Hi Ellen,

If you're not hosting your site yourself (maintaining the servers etc) I would contact the ISP thta hosts your site and ask them for advice. You could also try the FBI cybercrime site or google to find other cybercrime or security experts in your area.

http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/cyberhome.htm

Sounds like a potentially nasty situation - I'd love to hear what you discover.

Regards,
Pam

ellen abbott · Post by **ellen abbott** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 12:00 pm

Thanks for the input. Our site is hosted by Earthlink and I have corresponded with their support group, laid the whole thing out in detail, they even looked at the stats. Told me they would have to refer it to some specialist tech guy and he would get back to me, which never happened.

Have never gotton a response from Yahoo or MSN because I am not a subscriber to their services.

I'll check the cybercrime link you gave me, but since I have no idea what exaclty is happening, I don't know if this qualifies as a crime. And why would they funnel through my website if most of it originates through Yahoo and MSN?

These are the typical listings that show up in the 'referrals' stat section:

msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg
yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter
akuwait.net/vb/showthread.php

E