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I recently got a site indexed that is getting hits for some really dreadful phrases to do with 'little boys'.
It's a gift site, a clean one, but I use the word "sexy" to describle some of the products.
I think I might spend an hour writing a little php script to redirect these searchers to a "f* off" message.
Anyone else experience this kind of thing?
Nick
No, speech does not necessarily equal action... however, if someone is searching for inappropriate photos of minors, they are looking for the end product of a genuinely harmful and abusive activity, involving exceptionally helpless victims, whether or not they themselves ever have or ever will participate in such abuse directly.
Owning such material is considered a crime, in part because of the exceptional helplessness and impressionable nature of the victims, and if someone is deliberately searching it out, that (IMO) is reasonable cause to believe the searcher intends to view and possibly save (and therefore own) the material. Which, unless you work for a criminal investigation agency involved in tracking down and prosecuting people involved in such things, is legally inexcusable.
In the US, attempting to buy illegal drugs is a crime. Attempting to solicit prostitution is a crime. Inciting a riot is a crime. Threatening the life of the President is a crime. There are many situations in which a specific type/subject/style of speech is a reliable enough precursor to an activity considered harmful/dangerous enough that the speech itself is a crime.
I think the sort of "speech" Nick is finding in his logs can be reasonably assumed to be a precursor to involvement in crimes more serious and reprehensible than most of those listed in the previous paragraph... and as such, (IMO) whatever Nick can do to put an end to it is a good thing.
There are indications that many of the arrested people didn't only buy the ugly stuff, but also produced and sold it themselves. Similar (but smaller) campaigns earlier this year already crushed two other trade rings.
This is not just a pervert or two. This is growing into a solid industry. If you have information that can help stop those folks, the relevant authorities probably won't turn you down when you present it to them.
Make their stay at your site as offensive as possible and forward their IP's to any police you can think of.
if someone is deliberately searching it out, that (IMO) is reasonable cause to believe the searcher intends to view and possibly save (and therefore own) the material. Which, unless you work for a criminal investigation agency involved in tracking down and prosecuting people involved in such things, is legally inexcusable.
In the US, attempting to buy illegal drugs is a crime.
So, Google or any web site owner should also be turning everyone who searches for the words "buy drugs" (or even "buy [name of some drug]") in to the police? What should be done about someone who searches for the word "murder"?
I'm certainly not trying to excuse any crimes here, but you just have absolutely NO way of telling the intent, no matter what words were used in the query. It may be a reporter, a police offer, a self-assigned viligante, some other webmaster who saw it in his logs and wanted to see why his page is in the results, etc etc.
Go ahead and display a nasty warning to anyone with words you consider immoral in the query string, that's your perfect right.
But sending logs to police as some people suggested is, in my opinion, overreacting and also quite pointless.
What do you [don't get me wrong, not directed at anyone in particular!] expect to happen except you feeling a bit better about yourself? Do you believe the police are going to obtain search warrants for the ISPs and then the people themselves because of a quote out of your log file?
I've not written the script yet but it's my project for the day ;) I'd delayed as I hadn't had any more hits for a while but now I have 4 for this month (and the site got half a listing last update so once the links are counted this should rocket)
I'm plannning on displaying the search term in large letters and having onload="relaod the page in a new window" over and over...
If anyone has any other suggestions I'm open to ideas...
Nick
I work in the adult industry and have searched for those terms when tracking down some websites doing those sort of things. I would hate to think those sort of things would get me in trouble.
The government is doing a lot to shut down child porn.
There are many out there looking for illegal porn in an attempt to shut it down.
Sending them to another page really issn't going to accomplish much other than possibly make you feel better. If that is what you want - go for it, but you are probably better off just ignoring it.
The more traffic you get - the more problems you get. I used to try to solve every problem and win every battle, but it just isn't possible.
Maybe that “huge block from some ISP” is from some government agency trying to eliminate child porn. Maybe your desire to continue to allow your Web page to come up as relevant on search engines for “dreadful” phrases containing “lit*le boys” and “s*xy” amounts to wasting some of the government agencies time as they visit your site and verify it is clean.
Added: Even if you are confident that this is not the case for these log entries then it still may be the case for future log entries.
Nick
[pre]
<?
/*This script takes care of some nasty search phrases my home page is
getting hit for. */if($HTTP_REFERER) {
$url=parse_url($HTTP_REFERER);
$query=$url['query'];
if(strstr($query, "term1") && strstr($query, "term2") && strstr($query, "term3")) {
header("Location: /kill-my-pc/");
exit;
}
}
?>
[/pre]
Nick
P.S. I am sorry if I offended anybody with my light hearted crack in such a serious thread. I just couldn’t help but poke a little fun at Nick and his efforts to “get 'em”. No hard feelings Nick, I hope your program helps more than it hurts.
Nick
Oh yes. That's exactly what I'm suggesting...
Now, back to reality.... It would be totally OT for me to go into my personal views on what should and shouldn't be a crime in the US... but suffice to say I think the s*xual abuse of minors and the purchase and/or use of illicit substances belong in two totally different categories.
And, IMO, if someone comes on my property in the pursuit of illegal material or substances, it's pretty much my right to call the police on them if I please. As far as that goes, I consider a website to be very much like a public business/storefront. If someone tries to conduct illegal activities in my business, it's totally within my legal rights to try to stop them and/or turn them in.
I often get people searching for "adult content." Oddly, they sometimes stay on my site for a long time.
Nick
"Julie Christie" (in a description of a film set in Venice that starred Julie Christie)
"nude" (in the English title of an Italian film set in Venice, "Portrait of a Woman, Nude.")
I'm sure that some of my readers are disappointed when they can't find a picture of a naked Julie Christie on the page. :-)
A couple of years ago, when I was in a whimsical mood, I created a Paris photo-gallery page with a picture of three bronze statues in the Jardin des Tuileries and a caption that read:
"These nude women reflect the popularity of scuptural nudism as an artistic theme in Paris and throughout France."
It wasn't long until that page was getting several hundred page views a week--just as I'd expected. Obviously, there were a lot of search-engine users who wanted to know more about nude women and nudism in Paris and France. :-)
We're talking about ch*ld p*orn!
Not the same thing at all....
Nick
At the top of the search results page it says...
" you searched for ch*ld P**n, You sad B****** your ip has been logged(164.637.736) and the authoraties have automaticaly been informed"
No mater who searches the ip address is always the same... because it is just from a text file but if they are not in the know it woudl be enough to give them a scare.
I think this whole sitution could be avoided from the search engines side if they did something similar and logged these searches and actualy passed the information on. Not adult searches but blatant searched like "kid p*rm" , "child Porn" etc. If peopel didnt feel safe searching for these terms, we wouldent have to worry about the referals.
That is completely OT though and we don't need to get into that discussion again.
I agree with mivox, it's your property, do what you want. In the case of these particular terms, I don't see a problem with shaking them up a bit. At any rate, Nick's site, Nick's choice.
Maybe there is a good site to forward the wayward searchers to, like a site to help peodophiles reform. This way, you are giving out a clear message, and also doing something positive. I don't really think crashing their computers or making empty threats will get to the root of the problem, but helping these individuals help themselves would be a positive thing, IMHO.
Also, if it were my site, I would immediatly remove the offending word combination...
[edited by: agerhart at 1:57 pm (utc) on Sep. 23, 2002]
[edit reason] No URL drops please [/edit]
Useless in real terms but like you said, maybe a wake up call to these losers...
Nick
I'll not change my text, there is nothing wrong with it.
Nick
