Have you ever been going through a blog or website that seems pretty much ordinary in every single way only to stumble upon a link or an ad that looks entirely inappropriate? In situations like this you would probably end up wondering how Google is allowing such links to be posted in sites that have been listed on the search engine’s results and has been approved for an Adsense account when Google tends to favor family friendly content as well as links that lead to legitimate and safe sources.
The reason why you may be seeing links like this in perfectly ordinary content has a lot to do with a wide variety of things. For starters, when you check out the way people earn money, the best way to do so would be to have links to other websites that are advertising certain products or driving traffic to the websites that have been linked to. This can be a great way to earn money, but most bloggers and website owners are going to make it so that the links that would be featured are going to be in line with the kind of content that they have posted.
Hence, the valuable nature of links does not fully explain why these links are being posted at all. Why would website owners and publishers post highly inappropriate links to sites that are entirely unsavory in every single way just to earn money? After all this is the sort of thing that would put a lot of their potential followers and customers off, so it would hurt their business therefore making it pointless that they could potentially earn money from having these links put in in the first place.
The actual explanation is a lot more sinister than you might believe. According to BuzzFeedNews, hackers have been hacking websites and blogs from the back end and putting in links in secret, links that, when they are clicked on, would earn money for the hackers instead of the actual people that own the site or blog that the links have been inserted into. This secret link insertion means that hackers can put in all kinds of highly inappropriate links, with some people that have suffered at the hands of these hackers saying that some of these links lead to pornographic websites and other blogs that falls under illegal niches such as weapons and drugs, which is the kind of thing that can harm a lot of a publisher's hard fought reputations!
If you think that this is an issue that has not affected a lot of people, you would be wrong. Some bloggers have found that about a quarter of all of their posts have ended up being compromised in this way, and all in all there are around twenty thousand websites that have had links inserted into them by hackers and for the most part these webmasters and bloggers might not even know that the links are there at all until and unless someone complains about it which is the kind of thing that usually leads to a fair amount of scandal that anyone would ideally want to try and avoid.
Another potential problem that could end up occurring because of these links is that some of them could lead to viruses and other kinds of malware affecting your system. A lot of the websites that are affected are associated with religious entities, sites that contain government policies as well as a wide variety of other sites that are associated with institutions that really would not want anything to do with the fake links that are being injected into them by a wide variety of hackers.
Link injection is not allowed under Google’s terms of use so what the hackers are doing is both illegal as well as against Google policy. The only problem is that authorities don’t currently know how to tackle the matter at hand.
Read next: Don't Worry About This Email Scam - Even If You See Your Password In The Subject
The reason why you may be seeing links like this in perfectly ordinary content has a lot to do with a wide variety of things. For starters, when you check out the way people earn money, the best way to do so would be to have links to other websites that are advertising certain products or driving traffic to the websites that have been linked to. This can be a great way to earn money, but most bloggers and website owners are going to make it so that the links that would be featured are going to be in line with the kind of content that they have posted.
Hence, the valuable nature of links does not fully explain why these links are being posted at all. Why would website owners and publishers post highly inappropriate links to sites that are entirely unsavory in every single way just to earn money? After all this is the sort of thing that would put a lot of their potential followers and customers off, so it would hurt their business therefore making it pointless that they could potentially earn money from having these links put in in the first place.
The actual explanation is a lot more sinister than you might believe. According to BuzzFeedNews, hackers have been hacking websites and blogs from the back end and putting in links in secret, links that, when they are clicked on, would earn money for the hackers instead of the actual people that own the site or blog that the links have been inserted into. This secret link insertion means that hackers can put in all kinds of highly inappropriate links, with some people that have suffered at the hands of these hackers saying that some of these links lead to pornographic websites and other blogs that falls under illegal niches such as weapons and drugs, which is the kind of thing that can harm a lot of a publisher's hard fought reputations!
If you think that this is an issue that has not affected a lot of people, you would be wrong. Some bloggers have found that about a quarter of all of their posts have ended up being compromised in this way, and all in all there are around twenty thousand websites that have had links inserted into them by hackers and for the most part these webmasters and bloggers might not even know that the links are there at all until and unless someone complains about it which is the kind of thing that usually leads to a fair amount of scandal that anyone would ideally want to try and avoid.
Another potential problem that could end up occurring because of these links is that some of them could lead to viruses and other kinds of malware affecting your system. A lot of the websites that are affected are associated with religious entities, sites that contain government policies as well as a wide variety of other sites that are associated with institutions that really would not want anything to do with the fake links that are being injected into them by a wide variety of hackers.
Link injection is not allowed under Google’s terms of use so what the hackers are doing is both illegal as well as against Google policy. The only problem is that authorities don’t currently know how to tackle the matter at hand.
Read next: Don't Worry About This Email Scam - Even If You See Your Password In The Subject
