Are the Moldovians math freaks?

Hello,
I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
graduate level example math problems and solutions.
www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
sites (about 20) are porn sites. I went to those sites and couldn't
find my link anywhere. Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics. How are all
these things related and is my hosting linux server in trouble?

-Thanks



Todd Smith
UCF Mathematics
www.ExampleProblems.com -(wiki)- Math example problems and solutions
from all areas of graduate level mathematics.

> I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
> graduate level example math problems and solutions.
> www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
> you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
> kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
> sites (about 20) are porn sites.

I don't know about Moldova, but I suspect the porn referrers (I get those
too) are just an attempt to bring more traffic. e.g. people going back to
the referers. That's my guess, from seeing them do this for a while.

> Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
> be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics.

These are just spammers and marketers; they try to improve their page
ranking in search engines such as Google by increasing the number of
Internet sites that link to their pages. Standard spam/scam stuff.

> How are all these things related and is my hosting linux server in
> trouble?

The common link is spammers/marketers, and it has nothing to do with Linux.
No idea about Moldova though.

--
Jem Berkes
Software design for Windows and Linux/Unix-like systems
http://www.sysdesign.ca/

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:37:23 UTC, Jem Berkes <jb@users.pc9.org> opined:
> > I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
> > graduate level example math problems and solutions.
> > www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
> > you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
> > kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
> > sites (about 20) are porn sites.
>
> I don't know about Moldova, but I suspect the porn referrers (I get those
> too) are just an attempt to bring more traffic. e.g. people going back to
> the referers. That's my guess, from seeing them do this for a while.
>
> > Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
> > be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics.
>
> These are just spammers and marketers; they try to improve their page
> ranking in search engines such as Google by increasing the number of
> Internet sites that link to their pages. Standard spam/scam stuff.
>
> > How are all these things related and is my hosting linux server in
> > trouble?
>
> The common link is spammers/marketers, and it has nothing to do with Linux.
> No idea about Moldova though.
My guess: Some otherwise inocuous word on your site happens to mean
something interesting in Romanian (the language spoken in Moldova), and
turns up your site when Googled by a Moldovan. Why all Moldovans rather than
actual Romanians? Perhaps the magic word is also the name of a Moldovan
town, politician, patron saint, or (in view of your other statistics) a term
of kinky sexual connotation.

--
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel

elliptic1@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
> graduate level example math problems and solutions.
> www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
> you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
> kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
> sites (about 20) are porn sites. I went to those sites and couldn't
> find my link anywhere. Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
> be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics. How are all
> these things related and is my hosting linux server in trouble?

You are a math type, so you ought to understand this: your sample is too
low to draw any conclusions from. You have something around 5,000
visitors a month: if 44% are Moldovians when that reaches 5,000 per day,
THEN you'd have a curious situation. Right now, it's meaningless and
either due to some language quirk as someone else guessed or is just a
silly coincidence perhaps flavored by some Moldovian sending your link
to a few dozen friends.


--
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:53:43 -0400, Tony Lawrence wrote:

> elliptic1@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
>> graduate level example math problems and solutions.
>> www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
>> you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
>> kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
>> sites (about 20) are porn sites. I went to those sites and couldn't
>> find my link anywhere. Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
>> be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics. How are all
>> these things related and is my hosting linux server in trouble?
>
> You are a math type, so you ought to understand this: your sample is too
> low to draw any conclusions from. You have something around 5,000
> visitors a month: if 44% are Moldovians when that reaches 5,000 per day,
> THEN you'd have a curious situation. Right now, it's meaningless and
> either due to some language quirk as someone else guessed or is just a
> silly coincidence perhaps flavored by some Moldovian sending your link
> to a few dozen friends.

However, since it is a wiki, he should check to see if it is being used as
a scratch pad by credit card thieves.

One message forum I read had this as a problem for a while, (and is why
post editing is disabled), early each morning a set of posts would show up
and be removed about ten minutes later. When the admin noticed this in
the logs, he stayed up and watched as posts full of CC numbers went up,
were downloaded by several people, then were removed to hide the evidence.

--
Phoenix

Rick Pikul wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:53:43 -0400, Tony Lawrence wrote:
>
>
>>elliptic1@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
>>> I have a wiki website built to be the first online database of
>>>graduate level example math problems and solutions.
>>>www.exampleproblems.com. My site traffic is growing steadily, but if
>>>you look at my logs (bottom of the menu on the left) about 44% of the
>>>kb traffic is due to the country of Moldova. Also, my top referring
>>>sites (about 20) are porn sites. I went to those sites and couldn't
>>>find my link anywhere. Also, I had to delete a few posts that seemed to
>>>be just a bunch of links to other sites to all topics. How are all
>>>these things related and is my hosting linux server in trouble?
>>
>>You are a math type, so you ought to understand this: your sample is too
>>low to draw any conclusions from. You have something around 5,000
>>visitors a month: if 44% are Moldovians when that reaches 5,000 per day,
>>THEN you'd have a curious situation. Right now, it's meaningless and
>>either due to some language quirk as someone else guessed or is just a
>>silly coincidence perhaps flavored by some Moldovian sending your link
>>to a few dozen friends.
>
>
> However, since it is a wiki, he should check to see if it is being used as
> a scratch pad by credit card thieves.
>
> One message forum I read had this as a problem for a while, (and is why
> post editing is disabled), early each morning a set of posts would show up
> and be removed about ten minutes later. When the admin noticed this in
> the logs, he stayed up and watched as posts full of CC numbers went up,
> were downloaded by several people, then were removed to hide the evidence.
>

Now that's something I haven't seen yet. I see the porn site links (and
have code in posting scripts that prevents most of that), but I haven't
seen CC posts. Oh well, at least it should be easy enough to filter
that out.


--
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com

I disagree. I would expect to see statistically relevant information
with only a few hundred visits a month. Since 30 something percent is
US .com and 44% is Moldova, and a few months ago Moldova wasn't even on
the charts, I think something is definitely strange.

On 25 Jun 2005 18:46:11 -0700, elliptic1@gmail.com wrote:
> I disagree.

*WITH WHAT?*

Oh, I see. Another sloppy google groups poster.

> I have a wiki website ..

Lets stop here.. Wiki, first obvious answer would be "wiki spam" but i
guess you would know if your wiki would be spammed. But then again, some
scripts are not wise enough to know if you protect your pages or not,
they are just trying add their own content to your wiki. And as you have
very popular wiki engine, this is one very obvious reason.

Ok, then, going thru your site, you are publish all your statistics to
public. Bad thing also, go check "referer spam" with your choise of a
search engine. Basicly they are hitting you because that way they get
"free links" to rank'em higher in search engines and/or giving them free
publicity to lead others to their site thru yours..

Also, you have published the url for your phpmyadmin (in your
statistics), which is also very bad thing. So very 31337 moldovian
hacker or abit more 31337 hacker who have moldovian zombies could be
trying a bruteforce attack to guess your db passwords.

I think there's few good reasons for your question.