Well, I felt a bit embarrassed. Or actually a lot. As I found that this site, an inspirational site and all supposed to be about ‘positive’ and ‘good’ things, was infected with a lot of spam content. And being a web developer and thinking I know a bit what I am doing of course that was very embarrassing. As it seemed to have been going on for quite a while and I didn’t notice it. Ah, yes, I noticed it a few weeks ago, that some posts had been changed by one of the other team members and containing some spam type content. So I just wrote him an e-mail asking him to check his computer and change his password. But only a few days ago I found how much the damage was and how long it had been going on. For month, and some things were even older, like a year ago.
So I started cleaning up, thinking it were only the recent posts being affected. But no, it seemed something like more than half or maybe even something like 80% of 90% of the posts had been affected with this, well, I would call it malware. And the posts were relatively easy to find, as most of them had the words ‘viagra‘ and/or ‘cialis‘ in them, even though I am not fully sure if I found all posts that had been affected.
And while working on removing this, from my point of view, unwanted stuff, of course I kept thinking. And one of the strongest thoughts around these kind of things is and was the thought of Abraham Hicks about ‘allowing others’. As even though I felt very offended by this, partly because it just affects this site in search and seriousness, I also realized that the people who put this, who wrote the programs and stuff to insert this, had put quite some effort, quite some time, meaning also quite some desire to make this happen. And of course I felt offended as I had to put quite some time removing stuff that someone put in MY site that I believe does not belong there, or at least I believe should not be there.
And next to this I was asking myself who is paying those people to somehow ‘advertise’ all the stuff that these insertions were all about. And yes, I also do link building like that for customers, writing articles about their products only to be able to put a link and try to ‘rank up’ the site of my customer. So yes, my customers pay me for things like that also, even though I think I am doing it in a more subtle, a more appropriate way. But while thinking I also thought the difference is not that big. As my ‘articles’ are basically also ‘spam content’ on the internet. And no, I don’t put content secretly, like the spammers did in this site. But still.
And another thing I was thinking about was how people who don’t know so much about these things, bloggers just using WordPress as a ‘blogging tool’ and trusting everything is ok, would deal with something like this. As they probably wouldn’t even be able to cut the inserted code out. Or may not even notice it. And apparently Google also didn’t even notice it, as I didn’t get any messages in the Google Webmaster Tools about this site being infected with spam content. So apparently Google ignores this type of content, as it is also not really visible in posts.
But the last thing I was thinking about was about Viagra and Cialis itself. About the apparent attraction those products have. And about the enormous ‘anonymous’ demand for these drugs that must be behind this. And of course that brought me also to my own sexual problems, problems that seem related to indeed the biggest human need I know, the need for sex. But no, I never needed Viagra and Cialis for sexual fulfillment or to increase ‘something’ that many people obviously need or want. But yes, sex is still my biggest driver, and with that my biggest problem, as it is a highly unfulfilled need affecting my life a lot as it is not in the way and the level I want it.
So well, a lot of thoughts, and at least inspiration for this article. But no, I don’t really get how we came here as humanity, inserting this kind of stuff in other peoples website and most probably even being paid for it. While the service I am trying to give, the services I am giving, apparently are not so much in demand.
But that’s another story.