Sudden adsense earnings drop in July - Pinpointed to Hacked Website

someone hijacked my site and put their adsense pub ID on it

[Rodney]

I've been using adsense since it started and have done OK. My earnings have been pretty consistent over the years of reading the ups and downs from this forum. I've had my ups and downs as well, but overall, it's been pretty consistent.

So in July, when my earnings seem to be cut in half, I first chalked it up to one of the "downs", thinking that the overall trend was still pretty even.

Today, I took a closer look at my channels and I noticed that one of my top performing channels didn't seem to be recording any earnings through the end of July.

At the same time, I was getting intermittent reports from website visitors saying they couldn't reach some of my pages.

I decided to take a look at the source code of my website and I noticed that someone had found a "template" directory with open permissions and had edited all the templates that power the site to include THEIR publisher ID.

So for half of the month, my earnings from that site went to someone else.

Just a tip to others who may see significant earnings drops or who may run websites that are run off of "templates", be sure to secure your templates folders and files and double check the pub ID on your pages!

Hopefully, this will help someone else before they lose a half month of earnings.

[digitalv]

Wasn't there a web hosting company that got caught doing this to their customers recently? I remember hearing something about a host that had written a program to search for adsense code and would periodically (several times a day) switch the publisher ID around. So they were making money in small increments on a bunch of sites for a couple hours a day, then putting the code back and the users never noticed.

[StoutFiles]

Hopefully you saved that ID...you could tell Google what happened and they can check if that ID is appearing on other sites as well.

[OnlyToday]

...saved that ID...you could tell Google what happened

You could sue for damages or petition for criminal charges if the losses warrant it.

[Scurramunga]

You could sue for damages or petition for criminal charges if the losses warrant it.

Presuming the id holder and the hijacker are one and the same.

[m0thman]

Yep, I'd be inclined to go after them (in the legal sense). It's hard enough to make a crust in this game without someone else robbing you.

[Rodney]

Wasn't there a web hosting company that got caught doing this to their customers recently?

I didn't hear about this. Was it a bigger company?

I don't think it would apply in my case though, since the site is on my own dedicated server.

Hopefully you saved that ID...you could tell Google what happened and they can check if that ID is appearing on other sites as well.

Yep, I remembered to save the pub ID about halfway through scrambling to fix everything. I sent all the info to Google. I don't know if they'll be able to do anything about it.

I looked at the history for that domain channel, and it was all pretty steady for over 3 years until mid last month and then it went to 0 impressions :(

[edited by: Rodney at 2:39 pm (utc) on Aug. 5, 2008]

[potentialgeek]

So easy to get the lost money from Google moved out of their account into yours and them banned, too.

What a stupid thief! Book him for America's Dumbest Criminals/alternative country.

Google, however, should monitor sites and auto-detect changes in publisher IDs and/or new IDs for previous pages used for other accounts.

p/g

[StoutFiles]

Google, however, should monitor sites and auto-detect changes in publisher IDs and/or new IDs for previous pages used for other accounts.

That'd be a waste of time and moeny for Google as it happens so infrequently.

[Rodney]

So easy to get the lost money from Google moved out of their account into yours and them banned, too.

Have you done this before? Can you provide any tips on getting this accomplished beyond emailing Google the details?