« The Homosexual Agenda | Main | The Red Cross, AIDS, and LSAT Practice »

Pro-Life Hacking?

So, here's something embarassing that happened to me in Contracts. For reasons of my own I was googling for 'topiary garden,' and found a site that seemed to be a list of links to famous gardens. The top two links worked. Then I clicked on the third.

The URL seemed to go to a topiary site. Indeed, the site's TITLE tag involved gardening. What appeared on screen, however, were very, very graphic photographs of partial-birth abortion, complete with very boldfaced text regarding the evils of the procedure.

(Did I mention that I sit in the front row of my Contracts class? If any of my readers sit behind me and happened to have seen this, please consider this an apology.)

I took a look at the site when I got home, and for all the world it looked like a hack, as opposed to a site put up by an anti-abortionist to fool web-spiders. Also, I've noticed that, every so often, when I'm doing a Google or Altavista image search, similar images will turn up for inappropriate keywords.

Does anyone else know anything about this? I've tried searching the web for articles on who might be responsible, or what they're doing. I can say that, whatever one's position on abortion, this is one of the lousiest tactics I've ever seen. I'd welcome more information, since this is the kind of thing that gets my hackles up.

Posted by Anthony on November 21, 2003 6:25 PM |

Comments

Don't know if you saw a hacked site, or an anti-abortion 'honeypot'; such activists are indeed known to have put up sites like the one you stumbled upon with bogus keywords in them. Just one more thing making the net less useful (keyword spamming such as this).

Posted by: David Mercer | November 25, 2003 9:26 PM

That's the thing--it wasn't keyword spamming. The site was directly linked off of another site which was what seemed to be a hand-built list of topiary gardens: essentially, a link from a hobbyist's site to what purported to be another hobbyist's site. So the anti-abortionist would have to have researched and built a topiary site, with several working links, in order to hide his screed in it. I can't imagine doing that.

Posted by: A. Rickey | November 25, 2003 9:33 PM

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

NOTICE TO SPAMMERS, COMMENT ROBOTS, TRACKBACK SPAMMERS AND OTHER NON-HUMAN VISITORS: No comment or trackback left via a robot is ever welcome at Three Years of Hell. Your interference imposes significant costs upon me and my legitimate users. The owner, user or affiliate who advertises using non-human visitors and leaves a comment or trackback on this site therefore agrees to the following: (a) they will pay fifty cents (US$0.50) to Anthony Rickey (hereinafter, the "Host") for every spam trackback or comment processed through any blogs hosted on threeyearsofhell.com, morgrave.com or housevirgo.com, irrespective of whether that comment or trackback is actually posted on the publicly-accessible site, such fees to cover Host's costs of hosting and bandwidth, time in tending to your comment or trackback and costs of enforcement; (b) if such comment or trackback is published on the publicly-accessible site, an additional fee of one dollar (US$1.00) per day per URL included in the comment or trackback for every day the comment or trackback remains publicly available, such fee to represent the value of publicity and search-engine placement advantages.

Giving The Devil His Due

And like that... he is gone (8)
Bateleur wrote: I tip my hat to you - not only for ... [more]

Law Firm Technology (5)
Len Cleavelin wrote: I find it extremely difficult to be... [more]

Post Exam Rant (9)
Tony the Pony wrote: Humbug. Allowing computers already... [more]

Symbols, Shame, and A Number of Reasons that Billy Idol is Wrong (11)
Adam wrote: Well, here's a spin on the theory o... [more]

I've Always Wanted to Say This: What Do You Want? (14)
gcr wrote: a nice cozy victorian in west phill... [more]

Search


Choose Stylesheet

What I'm Reading

cover
D.C. Noir
My city. But darker.
 cover
A Clockwork Orange
About time I read this...

Shopping

The 3YoH Store

Projects I've Been Involved With

A Round-the-World Travel Blog: Devil May Care (A new round-the-world travel blog, co-written with my wife)
Parents for Inclusive Education (From my Clinic)

Syndicated from other sites

The Columbia Continuum
Other Blogs by CLS students