Unknown Link on my blog which I did not place there
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There is an unknown link on my site that is taking people to an untrustworthy web page. I have no idea where it is from and I’m wondering if its from an ad that WordPress allowed to run on my site since my blog is one of the sites hosted on WordPress.com that has not purchased the No Ads upgrade. My understanding is that WordPress sometimes allows ads to run on sites without that upgrade.
I noticed a strange link when I viewed my STATS page and looked at the CLICKS section. The link appearing there under CLICKS is connecting to: adcash.com
This is disturbing since this site, adcash.com is a site with a Very Poor rating and is known for viruses, malware and scams. I really have no idea how this link appeared on my site. If this is from an ad which WordPress is allowing to appear on blogsites, I request that they stop if from appearing since it can only damage the reputation of my blog or any site that is associated with such a link.
Has anyone else had unknown links appear on their sites and do you know if it’s because of ads running on your site?
Thanks,
AngelinaThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Those aren’t actually “ads” necessarily, or at the very least, they aren’t from us.
This is actually a type of spam, and while not as popular as Comment or Email spam, Click (and also Referrer) spam is something you’ll encounter with any website.
When a browser clicks a link to go elsewhere, our stats record the destination of that click in your Click stats. Unfortunately, there are many browser extensions and add-ons (as well as even more nefarious viruses) which can falsify the click record, leaving behind their “spam” Click record instead. The same is true for spam Referrers (where a Referrer is the site a visitor came from).
This isn’t any infection on your own computer, and it’s not an ad from us, it’s just an infected visitor who is unaware that they’re leaving a false trail as they go about their daily browsing.
With that said, we are doing our best to filter out spam Clicks and Referrers, but like with Comment and Email spam, sometimes a few make it through.
If this is a Referrer and not a Click, you can hover over the link in your stats and click the “Spam?” link which appears, to remove and block it permanently. We are currently testing this feature on Referrers only and we will be bringing it to Clicks eventually.
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@staff-blorbo
Thanks so much fro responding to this thread. I was hoping you would pick this up and explain that infected visitors leave false trails. -
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Thank you for taking the time to explain how these strange links occur in the Clicks section. It was certainly strange and confusing to see. I sent an email to Support as well asking about this since I wasn’t sure if it could be answered in the forum.
Much appreciation for enlightening me on the Spam trails that can be left on the site.
Best,
Angelina -
If you want to check your blog for links to feel better – use the Omni Search function
Dashboard >> Home >> Omnisearch >> that will search your entire blog – Posts, Pages, Comments etc. Tip: try using the main part of the URL for one of the search strings (as well as the whole link you find in the Clicks section) – a couple of times I saw clicks and became concerned about where the link was from, turned out it was in a comment and i had approved it a year earlier and forgotten that I had approved it.
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Thanks so much for the info. It’s good to know. If I see something like this again, I’ll use the Omni Search to check things out.
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Just discovered one of these (“interyield”) in my “Clicks” and was concerned I might be infecting visitors or something. I did run it through Omnisearch and nothing turned up. Thanks for this explanation. I’m relieved to know I’m not “infectious” but sorry to learn that one of my visitors was.
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