Text-Link-Ads Hacked?

By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News Network
Friday, March 10, 2006

Text-Link-Ads provide links on websites. It appears it has been hacked.

Someone has logged in as me and placed a recurring ad on my behalf for a site I have never seen nor care about ( american.idolblog.com ) and then directs the landing page to a strange site which isn’t even up yet ( www.brockblows.com ). It has chosen the keyword brock. The site doesn’t appear to be registered using betterwhois. My password is pretty strong so I don’t suspect the problem is because someone hacked into my account. I think either the hackers have found a backddor into text-link-ads or it is being perpetrated by an (ex) employee of the company gone bad.

Any other theories welcome. I have sent them two emails requesting to cancel the order but haven’t heard from them yet. I have tried cancelling the order myself but the order status being displayed is declined.

I will keep you updated on the details as they emerge.

Update: Text-Link-Ads was very prompt in response. It appears that an employee of the company placed a test order on my behalf by mistake. Their CFO and Inventory Manager (Brock Boser) informed me that the order had been cancelled and I will not be charged.

Note the landing page of this order - www.brockblows.com
Now note the name of their inventory manager - Brock Boser.
My theory of this being an inside job was correct. Additionally it appears he is an employee gone bad as can be reasonably surmised from the choice of domain name. What do you think?

YOUR VIEW POINT
NAME : (REQUIRED)
MAIL : (REQUIRED)
will not be displayed
WEBSITE : (OPTIONAL)
YOUR
COMMENT :