Bandwidth damnation!
• Richard Evans Lee
Gigabytes flash & die
My bandwidth counter flipped over yesterday 12:00 a.m. Monday morning. By mere chance I visited my Cpanel this afternoon. I'd already used over 6 Gigabytes of bandwidth. If I were really that popular I'd be charging.
Webalizer made it easier to ascertain who the bandwidth pirates were. I blocked a few IPs. Not having heard back from theplanet.com's abuse department I blocked them completely.
In an earlier note I speculated that some webloggers were inadvertent content providers for lowball, scammish e-commerce sites. Doing a little WhoIs research clearly some of the bandwidth thieves were various OptIns, Marts, and Malls. I've noted a few of their names before. I've been plagued by a fair number of bottom-of-the-barrel porn sites. The last pisses me off mightily. Not because pornographers, per se, are bad people. One of my weblogs is fairly porn-friendly. That is why the bottom feeders in internet sex make me angry. These appear to be people who've been exploited by the insta-porn people who promise to make you a rich adult webmaster in your spare time. Sure, by showing the same barely appealing naked photos that all the guys other clients use.
Enough of that tangent.
It hasn't been clear to me how the sites might benefit from my content but I didn't look deeply. They rarely show up in my referral logs, some not at all so it isn't referral spamming. On the surface they seem to grab common search engine key phrases to generate (often hilariously irrelevant) affiliate links to major e-commerce sites.
I'm deeply frustrated, angry. All of this is just a goddamned hobby. I need to get the on and off problem of bandwidth theft controlled. It isn't as if I can't read more, spend more time with Charles or work on the garden.