Help! My Expired Domain Is Now A Porn Site

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Well, lol, although I can see the very funny side of it and I do sometimes giggle about this to myself, in reality this is not funny at all, as this caused me some issues and to be honest could have had very serious implications for me with the possibility of getting banned from social media sites and potentially very bad for my online reputation.

So What Happened?

Well I had a fitness domain which I can assure you does not remotely sound like a porn site at all and I let that domain expire. Obviously someone now registered my expired domain and decided to use it as a porn site. The only reason I can imagine this has happened is because I had quite a number of backlinks on that particular site and quite a bit of traffic coming to the site.

Unfortunately I have built a lot of affiliate pretty links via this site for the promotion of my various fitness programs and of course over the years I have shared these links everywhere all over social media and to make matters worse I have loads of my YouTube videos branded (watermarked) with that expired domain that has now been turned into a porn site and there is nothing I can do about those YouTube videos branded in that way, because I do not want to delete those videos that ranks in the top pages of YouTube and Google and lose out on all that traffic.

The best I could do was to replace within the description of my YouTube videos new links that now directs to my fitness affiliate offers instead of to that guys dodgy porn site.

Got Lucky On Pinterest

I realised only some time after my expired domain been turned into a porn site that loads of my Pinterest Pins was linking to my expired domain. Pinterest could have easily banned my account for linking to a porn site which was never my intention, so I had to make quick work of changing all of those links connected to my pins on Pinterest.

I Got Flagged By Facebook

It was really bizarre, but I did a very innocent post on a Facebook page that encourages businesses to advertise their business there and my post lead to an article of my embroidery computerised software business. For some strange reason FB flagged my post as possibly containing nudity or sexual activity?

I put two and two together and thought that just maybe it is because I have some fitness related Facebook pages connected to my personal Facebook account which now possibly contains links of my old expired domain that now leads to a porn site. As a result my personal Facebook account could have possibly now been associated with those dodgy links and therefore perhaps that Facebook flagged an innocent post of mine due to perhaps the association of these links with my personal profile. This is of course just me speculating here and luckily for me it ever only happened once.

I did straight away go to all my Facebook fitness pages and tried deleting all those associated links dating back to as far as the year 2013. What a hassle.

Summary And Lessons To Learn

Lol, these funny/unusual things only ever seem to happen to me. I can write a book. I am yet to tell you about my websites that got hacked by a very well known terrorist organisation that was trying to spread their propaganda via my websites by replacing my index files with their propaganda. So if you typed in my website url's then their propaganda would have appeared instead of my website home page. That is partly the reason why I gave up on online marketing for 5 years due to some of my websites that got blacklisted by Google (temporarily) as some of my websites at the time got used for promoting terrorist propaganda, lol :) My work colleagues were lying on the floor laughing as I was contacting the Cyber Terrorist Division of the police force when I first realised what has happened to my websites.

The lesson to learn is: Think very carefully about your promotional strategies of where and how you go about creating your affiliate links. What happened to me is a very unlikely scenario, but now you can see what is actually possible. So do always think about the worst case scenario of what can happen if you was to let your domain expire. And then remember my story and make sure to learn from this and plan differently for how to go about the creation of your affiliate pretty links.

The moral of the story is that for us online marketers your online reputation is everything. Something like this over which I had no control could have potentially ruined my online reputation, got me banned from all my social media and could have completely destroyed my online business. This is also true for you or any other online marketer here on WA. So this is a warning to be careful how you go about your promotional strategies.

Ps. I hope that you found the information contained herein of value and if you had any similar experiences, please feel free to share. I will be glad to know that I am not the only one that these things ever happen to, lol.

Thanks so much for reading and I wish you all the very best of success here on WA!


Kind regards

Schalk Zeeman

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Recent Comments

97

wow! that is all I can come up with....
you have done it before... you will do it again!@
Lance

Thank you! Yes I am actually very very excited now! I am so excited to make a great success of it all this time around and to be much more successful than I have been before all the trouble started years ago lol. It is actually such a great feeling to be able to start fresh from scratch and knowing this time around I am doing it right and will see different results because of it.

So by the way I am working on a brand new site right now which I am super excited about. Cannot wait for it to see the light as is under construction atm. Not everything is bad though lol, there are definitely some good in all of this as I still have social media platforms with quite a following for the fitness niche I used to promote. The site I am rebuilding now (although not the fitness niche) still after all of this gets around 316 unique visitors per month, so although not that much, I am starting with some traffic coming in. After the changes though I am not perfectly sure though if I would be able to retain all that traffic. But I will very soon surpass that I believe once the site gets up and running, coz I am now busy putting out much better quality information there and then will soon start ramping up the traffic.

perfect! sounds like a plan....

Oh My... you should write a book!
I laughed, and then I cried....
I hope it all works out and comes together for you😎
Shaunna

Lol, thanks Shaunna. No, everything is more than good lol! I have restarted building everything on the 2nd of January and more motivated than ever. I pretty much stopped any online marketing efforts around 5 years ago, but I sort of kept on paying for certain domains until I have let loads of them eventually go.

I had way too many websites lol and was not close to as focused enough and created enough content for all them websites. Now I am doing things right and the reason I came to WA to make sure I learn how to do things right. I am now just going to be super focused on a small number of websites and this will ensure I have full control of it all at all times.

And I only use one premium WP theme now that contains all plugins that I could ever need and this is from a reputable company that keeps their plugins and themes updated and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Wishing you loads of success here on WA!

Kind regards
Schalk

Wow, if I were you I would redo all links so that you are not tied to any porn sites. Incredible what some people will do to ride on the backs of legitimate people for their illicit activities. Be careful, and thank you for sharing.
Ken

Yes I tried to trace back everywhere I have left those links in the past. But remember the site does not belong to me anymore so there is nothing I can do to go and undo any of those links that are connected to that site other than trying my utmost to delete it everywhere. So when someone clicks on the pretty link I created I guess it is not active anymore as in the sense of being active but as pretty links stems from your main url it does take people to the site still. So it is like when you get an error when you deleted a page because the page does not exist anymore but you can still access the navigation tabs of the website etc.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I forgot about the links inside the old site. Is there anyway you can change your pretty links to where just a 404 error will come up? I wouldn’t know where to start. Good luck.
Ken

Ok lets keep it very simple as it has not even that much to do with the created pretty links actually. As explained a pretty link contains the main url name and then a little extension to the main url. But lets make it very simple. Think about your domain name. How many places have you shared your actual domain name on social media etc over the last 5 years? Can you remember where exactly you shared it? So years later that domain does not belong to you anymore and you have no control on what is uploaded on that domain anymore, but you have shared that domain thousands of places over the years. So this is what is happening here pretty much. Saying that on top of this I have created many blogger and tumblr sites as well with content on there that ranked pretty darn well in Google but as I focused more on Wordpress these sites got forgotten and left behind and tbh the links might still be shared there, so one area I still need to go and track back and not even sure if I can remember all those blogger sites and Tumblr sites I created anymore and its login details lol.

But I will make a bit of work on that and then everything should be more than good! Just getting rid of it everywhere as much as possible then hopefully all will be fine and get drowned out very quickly.

Thank you for sharing your story. I feel your pain. I am hoping the same doesn't happen to me as I also let a domain name expire. Fortunately for me, my site wasn't ranked. I wish you much good fortune in getting disconnected from the Porn site. Alas, this is a good example of what can happen.
Ken

Wishing you all the best here on WA!

Sheesh... thanks for sharing

Sheesh is right! LOL!

Thank you for sharing your story, we always learn things by our mistakes, it's hard sometimes to recover from them but it's the part of the learning experience I guess, everyone has to be careful, especially these days with all the scams that are everywhere.
I've just renewed my Domain, hope nobody will have it.
Jacqueline

Did you actually just renew your domain after reading my story? LOL :) Or just coincidence that you renewed it recently?

Wow.... what a story. I don't know which would be worst, the terrorist organization story or the porn.... Thanks for sharing.

I know have a new reason to avoid letting any of my domains expire.

I am just glad that all the bad experiences helped me so much along the way and the reason I know that things are going to be so much different now this time around. The hacking was due to the mistake I made of buying WordPress plugins from online marketers which they stopped supporting after some years and these plugins were used all over all my articles, pages over around 35 websites, so you can imagine what a mess it was when the plugins were not supported anymore. These outdated plugins caused vulnerabilities I believe that made my websites easy targets for hackers. So one thing just led to the other.

Now I will be very vigilant and much more focused and gone are the days of having shiny object syndrome and buying plugins from third parties unless it is from reputable companies whom I know will continue to support their plugins throughout the years to come.

That is a good warning about the plugins..... Thanks!

You are welcome! Yes, this is one of the most valuable lessons and hardest lessons I have ever learned. The buying of plugins that I never imagined they would just stop supporting after they made their money.

Mm i does not have any advice. Maybe other guys. Good luck

The advice is be careful about your online marketing strategies because if you allow your domains to expire it can have devastating consequences like it had or potentially could have had for me. I never for one moment imagined that this could have ever happened to me. So this is an important aspect to keep in mind. Always think about the worst scenario and plan for it. Also this post needs to make you think about website security as well. Are all those aspects in check? Do you change your passwords on a regular basis? Are all your plugins updated on a regular basis so there are no vulnerabilities for hackers etc. to compromise your websites? The moral of the story is that for us online marketers your online reputation is everything. Something like this over which I had no control could have potentially ruined my online reputation, got me banned from all my social media and could have completely destroyed my online business. This is also true for you or any other online marketer here on WA. So this is a warning to be careful how you go about your promotional strategies. I hope you find the message is now a bit more clear.

WOW that is scary what could possibly happen.

Thanks for sharing. May be a point to always keep in mind.

Barry/Barney44

Yes, I never in my wildest dreams imagined this could have ever happened to me, especially in the light that the domain does not sound remotely like a porn site.

Might have been a sight with high traffic that drew them to it.

I guess I'm stating the bleeding obvious, but the takeaway here is when you've got a valuable domain, never let it expire. In fact, if it's making money renew it for 5 years at a time.

Or put it on automatic renewal.

Yes Phil, it was a bit of a mistake to let this one go. I was at a point where I gave up on online marketing pretty much, so I just let everything go pretty much and I had so many websites I had to pay the renewal for, but as I did not really do any marketing anymore it did not bring in any money anymore, so I just ended up spending so much money without seeing any returns. But yes, this site had potential and I should have kept it.

Indeed, but I can sympathize with Schalk's feeling here. I have so many domain names that I've taken all but a handful off auto-renewal so that I can make a considered decision each year as to whether each one is worth keeping.

It is pretty easy though, to take an auto renewal off. You do get notice it's about to happen. Then you can decide.

Thanks, Helen. While all registrars warn you of impending expiration, not all warn you of impending renewal, though.

Thanks a lot for sharing!

You are welcome! Hopefully it was of some help somehow :)

Sorry for what happened and thank you so much for sharing!

Thanks so much! But that is all good! I have started to rebuild everything from scratch on the 2nd of January 2019 - pretty much starting over completely and I am more motivated than ever! This time around I know things are going to be so much different and I know the mixed success I had previously will this time around change to a massive success. I wish you the greatest of success here on WA!

Thank you. I wish you the same!

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