By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General Discussion - Beware of scraping bots and keyword stuffing, Google neraly ruined my marriage

Cobretti2 said:

I searched your username on google and no bad shit comes up, did they clear it all up or I am wondering if its something on your local PC causing bullshit to generate in google on your screen only.

If you still getting weird shit maybe search on another device on another network where you are not signed in. See if same shit happening.

Did you click on page 2, that's where the stuff starts. Luckily the first page that comes back is free of crap.

It happened first on my wife's iPhone, hence how I got in 'trouble' lol. iPhone doesn't even use Google afaik?

This is what I get right now with safesearch on

On page 2 of the results.

I get the same on my wife's laptop, although there it doesn't return pages but you just scroll down to the mess (same result)

The bad results don't turn up on Bing, interestingly Bing returns tons of search results from posts I made on the Microsoft Flightsim forums, little biased lol. When I bing for "Road 96 Fortune Pig" the real link turns up
https://www.reddit.com/r/Road96/comments/p8g2a7/fortune_pig_fortune/
(I didn't post there, no replies from me at all in that thread)

Google "Road 96 Fortune Pig" and I also get the correct result, yet followed by all those scam results

Seems there are even more of them around. All those links go back to [172.64.80.1] which is Cloudflare hosting network.

Anyway good to know it doesn't happen for everyone, but that is very strange.

Can my wife's iPhone, laptop and my laptop all be infected with the same virus? And how would a local virus even be able to grab stuff from Reddit posts I made years ago and infiltrate my results from Google. It also happens when I Google on Edge on my wife's laptop (which I just turned back on since at least half a year ago. The thing was complaining about being behind on windows updates, Firefox needed updating and wanted a full refresh since it's been so long. So very unlikely it caught a virus while being off all this time)

Yet I haven't tried searching on a different network, it's all from my home network.
Could it be a problem on my ISP's end?



Around the Network

Interesting if I google Road 96 Fortune Pig, I get all the weird stuff, but your username nothing, not even more then 1 page of results.

Maybe google does a lot more filtering based on local info then we thought.

As for viruses, it be any computer running the same OS on the same network that may have filesharing enabled. so I doubt your iphone would have it. 

Very strange, how its appearing randomly though.

EDIT: now if I search your username after searching Road 96 Fortune Pig, I get all the weird links showing up too, so google must have created a common link between the two now, hence why it all appears

Last edited by Cobretti2 - 6 days ago

 

 

Thanks for confirming it's not just on my local network.

The iPhone was last connected to my laptop (for backup) a couple months ago. Not using iTunes, just to bulk copy all the pictures. Other than that there's no file sharing or any other connection.

Good point about Google maybe creating a common link. Perhaps that's why I keep getting more and more of these spam results, every time I check I might be re-inforcing the search profile Google has on me :/ However where are these links coming from in the first place. Maybe Google has a virus...

The odd thing is, when you copy paste one of those links into a new tab, it redirects to google.com.
Ping the address you get to the Cloudflare network. [172.64.80.1]
Only if you click if from the google results list, then it redirects to localized spam

For example
https://dugtaesbf.fizjoterapia-berencz.pl in a browser -> google.com
ping dugtaesbf.fizjoterapia-berencz.pl -> 172.64.80.1
172.64.80.1 in a browser -> Error 1003 Ray ID: 80862680996c36a5 • 2023-09-18 02:27:32 UTC Direct IP access not allowed (Cloudflare message)
Google "dugtaesbf.fizjoterapia-berencz.pl" then click on the link to that address that pops up and this shows (briefly)

Which gets redirected to localized spam, including porn. It's also different each time (from the same link)

If I view the source of the result page, it's a giant mess, but I did notice my gmail address in there.
Signing out of all Google accounts doesn't make a difference though, except my email address is gone from the source page.

I'm not fast enough to copy the url that first pops up before it redirects, just the screenshot.
Bing doesn't find that link at all when you search for it, and the source of Bing's result page looks organized.
This is the source from Google's result page:

Which goes a mile to the right and further down as well. Lot of unreadable code :/
Wth is all in that mess.


Edit: when I right click the link I posted higher up, it redirects to local spam. Copy paste it into the address bar and it changes into google.com.
I'm so confused lol.

Last edited by SvennoJ - 6 days ago

I got a replay back from Google today


Hello,

Thanks for sending in your report.



Another reply from Google, someone or something is looking at it, though still not understanding what I'm trying to tell them:

Any way I can make it more clear :/


Hello,

Thanks for sending in your report.

We need more information so we can look into your request. The following URLs are not specific enough for us to find the content you want removed:


If the content is still online, please submit your request again. Try to include more specific URLs that show the content, for example, http://www.example.com/content/page.html.

Also, please note that we can remove the content from our search results, but it might still exist on the site. This means someone can still find the content through the URL to the site, social media, and other search engines.

You can also contact the webmaster of the site and ask them to remove the content. Click here to learn how to contact a webmaster.


Reply:
I'll try to explain again.

These are not specific pages, they are links that only exist to automatically redirect you to localized ads, malicious spam ads including pornography that often ask to to enable something to get more access. Everytime you click one of those links you get a different malicious ad site served up. Open these links in a new tab even ads a back button, press back and you get stuck on a dodgy video which then keeps repeating when pressing back.



The links are all like that, and all come from the same source.
They keep populating your search results with different combinations of keywords / sentences and randomized adresses.





Some tool got my name and post dates from r/road96 as well as words and sentences to form these titles and random text blurbs. All those descriptions were never posted by anyone, they are put together by a malicious AI tool to pollute your search results. And in this way linking my username to localized spam, including explicit pornography.
Hopefully you can sort this out before Google searches become useless. It seems Google is targeted by this 'bot' as the results do not show up in Bing, nor even when you directly search for any of the results listed above. Your search database has been compromised.

Regards,
Sven-Erik Jurgens



(Links replaced with images not to populate the search engine with more of this crap :/)

There are still some valid results in there as well. And when I google "Road 96 Fortune Pig" I get another 19 of these malicious links without my user name. How many are there???


Around the Network

It's still getting worse. It's no longer just from Road96, now also from GT7 and FS2020



And searching directly for this new title "GT7 Clean race bonus indictaor"

This lot is constructed from stuff data mined from r/GT7 (reddit again)

The FS2020 link in the first picture can only come from MS flightsim forums.
(And clicking on that gave me a page with click here to run setup.exe, uhm right)

Bing is not compromised (yet), I guess I'll change my default search engine.