Free hosts skimming off foreign traffic...

[gkk]

I've discovered that many free hosts MAY be skimming off foreign traffic before it even hits end-user pages. See the ongoing investigation:-

http://bbs.gofuckyourself.com/board/Forum1/HTML/007026.html

Hope this was of interest!

[bigdog]

why not it is there fucking host all that foreign traffic is shit anyway

[emgee]

i don't call swiss/belgium traffic foreign.
(even if my language sounds very foreign)
and maxismut redirect exactly this one..

but like you said,it's there host,they can do it,if they like this;-)

maybe i win a championship with my big tgp-banlist in 1-2 years..lol

[bramdaman]

bigdog,

Yes it's their fucking host, but if you WANT foreign traffic on your galleries and they won't let ya, u might wanna move on. So a list would be nice

[battuss]

Well, its fucked, they shouldnt be doing that without telling. Once again the usual story. VERY strict rules on cheating. Place their footers a little bit too low and your gallery is gone but they are allowed to cheat. Since tgp traffic doesnt convert for me too well i try to feed my cj with it and asian traffic is perfect for that. And if a host redirects it without you knowing then then you are being fucked over.

[Alex From San Diego]

That isn't cheating......I have an idea, get paid hosting and then you can do whatever you want with all the traffic regardless if it's foreign or other but until then and you continue to use freehosting quit your bitching. I get so sick of these webmasters who think freehosts are some kind of charity service for them. Well I have some news for you, they're not. They give you "free" hosting but in exchange for ad space. If the rules say no more than 5 breaks between the bottom of your page and their footers than that is what it means. You want to stretch it to 6 or 7 breaks, then expect to get deleted. You want all the traffic, then get on a paid host. You can't afford paid hosting then deal with it or get out of the buisness.

[shane]

I bet terra doesnt redirect http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/wink.gif

[Alex From San Diego]

Maybe they don't, they just delete your account and use their 404 page....

[*Kimmykim*]

Great post Alex -- too many people forget that free is never really free...

[shunga]

You can't afford to be sentimental with freehosts, you just have to move on when they do something you don't like. And no traffic is bad, even if it doesn't convert directly it still has uses.

[battuss]

Alex, i have 2 servers and soon im gonna buy 1 more. Im not talking about a money issue here. If they offer something free then at least be honest. We already "pay them off" by giving them tons of pageviews with their headers and footers. If they redirect asian traffic then simply say: Our service is free, we take the headers and footers and we redirect asian traffic. Its that simple.

[dynamite]

That IS cheating and hosting for free cannot be an excuse for that. I need some good proxies from .jp and other countries, so we can build freehost blacklist and publish it on some high-traffic pages - it will be nice promotion for any host who likes dialers! http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/biggrin.gif GKK, do you know for any good proxy list? I have searched some 'hacker' pages, but all proxies are very slow...

[emgee]

i don't use myself any freehost,but surfers at my site who visit gallerys get fucked hard with 30 popups at the same time.
they cant handle it like we do this..lol

and i think a stable number of 1000 visitors more every day show me,i'm not wrong if i try to keep it clean;-)

freehosts have the right to do everything..like i said before,so don't use it,if you don't like it.

and tgp's-->don't post it.

[andy2000]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by dynamite:
That IS cheating and hosting for free cannot be an excuse for that. I need some good proxies from .jp and other countries, so we can build freehost blacklist and publish it on some high-traffic pages - it will be nice promotion for any host who likes dialers! http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/biggrin.gif GKK, do you know for any good proxy list? I have searched some 'hacker' pages, but all proxies are very slow...</font>

If they redirect based on laungue setings on the pc that won't help it will only work if they redirect by ip. I use a paid host anyway

[Beaver]

Redirecting traffic is THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT THEFT

If they don't want certain countries burning up their bandwidth then you should choose your OWN url that the traffic gets redirected to.

I will be watching all the posts on AWI & GFY and blacklist every free host that redirects traffic.

Shit as it may be it still gets credits in toplists and link exchanges.

[*Kimmykim*]

How bout you pay the bandwidth on ALL your traffic Beaver and then you can send it where you want to.

There ain't no free lunch guys. Start paying the bw on your hun listings and maybe the freehosts will cut you some slack.

[Muff]

I never have used freehosts and never will.

But they should let you know that they are redirecting foreign traffic or wont except foreign traffic to their pages.

[Beaver]

Kimmykim THEY offer free bandwidth and hosting THEY lay down the rules to abide by
I stick to them.
THEY never F*****G asked ME if THEY could STEAL MY traffic.
We provide traffic for their banners in exchange for the hosting.
As I have already mentioned if they don't want certain countries then you should provide your own redirect url to save them bandwidth, none of this is mentioned in the signup or I wouldn't be with them.
Anything I have on a redirecting host will not be there tomorrow.

[Alex From San Diego]

OK Beaver, you keep watching the boards then. That is real productive of you. Let me ask you this, why do you use a freehost if you do? Or if you are a cj site and call yourself a so called "TGP" what are you doing different than the freehost? You are probably scratching your head saying what the fuck is this guy talking about. Let me explain. You are a "TGP" and are using a trading script. Joe webmaster builds a slick gallery and submits it to you. You link it but with a catch. You set his gallery to p=70 or even worse p=50....Are you not stealing traffic? You bet your ass you are. Joe surfer clicks on the link and thinks he is going to see whatever your description states but instead you are sending him off to another trade. So don't give me that shit of THEFT, THEFT, THEFT....You and all the other people here bitching about freehosts are just as guilty with your cj sites. So go ahead and blacklist all the freehost. It won't bother me as I'm sure it won't bother any of the others.....

[Torben]

Alex From San Diego, It is all about fair play. If you redirect traffic then write it in your rules; if you do not write it in your rules and redirect anyway it is cheating and stealing. All this about TGP stealing traffic is nonsense, the gallery owner does not own the link on the TGP; the TGP owner does, so if we want to send some of it to trades it is not stealing from the gallery owner. Could you please state all your free sites so we all can avoid them?

[Beaver]

Alex STFU I don't run tgp or cj
I DON'T steal traffic from anybody I GIVE it away http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif
If freehosts want to redirect traffic then it should be in the signup.

[Alex From San Diego]

Torben...it is their link and they took the time to submit to you as well put a recip back to you. Until you pay for your BW, no one is stealing from you. How can it be stealing from you, if you are not paying for shit...FREE is FREE and the owner of freehost can do what is necessary in effort to keep the freehost "FREE". I personally don't have a problem stating in my rules that foreign traffic is redirected in an effort to maintain this service free.

[gkk]

As I suggested in the thread on the other board, the simple solution is for a group of volunteers to compile a list of free hosts that skim and free hosts that don't skim.

That way, people can make an INFORMED decision.

This also side-steps the issue of whether it is fair, right, acceptable etc. since the real issue is disclosure and education i.e. learning which hosts do what to traffic from which origin.

Example: one free host might not skim at all. Another might only skim *really* unproductive traffic (in their opinion) like Korean, Russian etc. traffic. A third might skim all traffic from countries where English is not one of the national languages (Germany, Belgium etc. would be included as well as Asian countries etc.)

All these examples seem to exist in the free hosting world, judging by the comments that have surfaced so far.

IF you are a webmaster reliant on free hosting, wouldn't you feel happier knowing what your host will do to the traffic you are driving to "your" site?

If you are a free host owner, wouldn't you feel happier to know what your competitors are doing?

There are a whole raft of reasons for trying to get to the bottom of this issue - the themes "it sucks" or "free hosts can do what they like" play no part in collecting and disseminating such information, only in the post-collection PERSONAL INTERPRETATION of the collected information.

[Torben]

Alex, all links on my TGP is mine and I decide what I want to do with my traffic. When I check out a gallery I expect to see the same as the rest of the world would see clicking that link; I do not want redirects and popup on any of the sites I link to. If I new that some countries was redirected, or send into popup hells, I would not post that gallery on my site.

I think it is OK for you to redirect traffic as long as you state it on your signup page. The least you can do is to be honest, then we all know what to “pay” for your free host.

[deniska]

gkk,

You have made some earlier posts on this board about redirecting your non english speaking traffic which is 30% of your site. And provided a little script which was downloaded by 100 people. You also mentioned you have 1.5k of Japenese traffic that you are redirecting to ProfitPlantation. I assume you have at least 80-200k a day of regular tgp/gallery traffic. I guess the traffic is very unproductive for you and its costing you bw thats why you want to redirect it and there is nothing wrong with that. I think free hosts should make others aware of what they are doing with this traffic and you should follow the same lead as well.

[erswebmaster]

Alex...first of all I think this is a silly discussion.

I for one opted to pay for my hosting so I wouldn't deal with any of this crap.

But in my opinion your rationalization of all of this is flawed.

Let's move your concept of who owns what to sponsors.

You seem to be saying that since the free hosts are paying the bandwidth bill and own the url that someone is building their galleries on they should be able to do with the traffic that url receives whatever they feel like.

So in theory should something like this apply to sponsors who provide free content to promote their sites as well?

No they are not paying for my bw but they did pay the model, the photographer, the make-up artist, the costumer as well as anything and everything else that went into making the free content they provide. Should a sponsor be able to redirct traffic from foreign servers to something they feel is more beneficial to them?

It all boils down to contracts, the tos that people agree to when they sign up for a program whether it's a sponsor or free host.

If the agreement states that if we choose to use the free hosts service with the knowledge that certain domains would be redirected that's all good. Someone can make an informed decision on whether or not to use that service.

However if it doesn't state this and they do redirect the traffic...in my opinion the free host has not abided by their own tos and should not be trusted.

What else is that free host going to do without my knowledge?

Now I'm not a lawyer and hell...I don't even play one on t.v. but it seems that once a party breaks a contract that contract is now null and void and legally is not binding. So it would seem that a free host might just be subject to possible civil litigation...of course only a fool would pull something like that if they can even prove actual damages.

But in the end it all really boils down to trust.

Why not go ahead and post this information in the TOS if you are a free host?

If this is not cheating and is not so bad then what are free hosts afraid of?

If the free hosts decide not to do this it will only hurt them as I have learned in such a short time in this industry that this industry cannot and will not tolerate cheaters.

And once someone is labled a cheater that information tends to disseminate rather quickly and the offending party has to work extra hard to regain that fragile trust that they destroyed.

My whole mindset coming into this industry was that I wanted to have a long and fulfilling career doing what I am doing. I want to grow with this industry and reap some of the rewards as I am sure you do.

Now the only way that can happen is for this industry to continue to exist. But with companies pulling things like this, or dialer sponsors that act in bad faith, or sponsors that cheat their webmasters, porn sites that don't use warning pages etc. will do nothing but bring more eyes down on this industry proving to those that live on the right side of this world that we cannot take care of our own and need to be monitored.

This kind of thing does nothing but bring negative focus on the already jaded image this industry has.

Who wants more government regulation? Raise your hand!!!

Who wants to act responsibly and leave the government out of this? Raise your hand!!!

Just my opinion take it for what it's worth.

eros

[gkk]

deniska, I haven't got a clue who you think I should be "alerting" about redirecting my traffic!

I don't host pages on behalf of other people. I don't send traffic to other sites (except for sponsor sites, to make money). So who am I "misleading"? Thankfully, I manage to make myself aware of what I am doing most of the time http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif and nobody else is involved in my site.

This is diversionary from the main point, which is some free hosts (who are in the business of hosting sites for OTHER people) are skimming foreign traffic, and some are not.

[Bill Cosby]

"who are in the business of hosting sites for OTHER people"


You left out "in exchange for traffic"

[gkk]

No, that also is not relevant.

I am talking about apples-to-apples comparisons.

&lt;EXAMPLE&gt;
Take 2 free hosts. Both host sites for free. One skims foreign traffic (semi-secretly in that only surfers from affected countries notice anything) and one doesn't.

Since webmasters using both free hosts are sending the same amount of traffic TO each of the 2 free hosts, they probably would be happier to know that 100% of the traffic remains theirs at Host A, but that X% of the traffic magically gets taken away from them at Host B.
&lt;/EXAMPLE&gt;

Free hosts have banners, footers, headers and popups to make money from traffic sent to them. This is the USUAL quid pro quo for providing the bandwidth and server space free of charge. Webmasters can look at existing sites, and make a decision as to which host to use based on the intrusiveness of the advertising they show, as well as the server speed, acceptability to major TGP sites etc.

This skimming of foreign traffic is a whole different ballgame, as webmasters can't see it or measure it - indeed they may not even know it is happening.

Free hosts can do WHATEVER THEY LIKE. It's their business. Where it becomes our business, (and where it becomes unfair) is when they do things that the webmaster CAN'T DETECT yet which penalize him/her.

There are huge outcries and debates whenever a sponsor looks like they might be shaving (another inherently unmeasurable act, when you stop to think about it) yet many people are willing to stick up for free hosts that SECRETLY shave traffic. Weird!

[gkk]

One other point: this practice also hits TGP owners. Take UH-OH for example. A year ago I could view all the galleries posted there. Now I can see perhaps 1 in 3. At a certain point the ratio will become so low I will never go back there again. And they just lost a repeat visitor.