Hijacked links on my food blog going to explicit websites!

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  eatfreesimply · Member · May 28, 2020 at 9:44 pm

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  My food blog has been sitting for a few years with very little action as my life is busy. I was horrified today to have a friend email that some of my recipe links are leading to sexually explicit, abusive websites. How do I deal with this? Can I take my site off line but still keep my content?

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  kokkieh · Staff · May 29, 2020 at 8:58 am

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  Hi there,

  Can you please tell us the URL of the site you’re referring to?

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  eatfreesimply · Member · May 29, 2020 at 6:20 pm

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  I switched the blog into private mode, but the url is freeeats.wordpress.com

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  supernovia · Staff · May 29, 2020 at 6:25 pm

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  Thanks, I’m not seeing any of those links. Is there a chance your friend’s browser was hijacked?

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  supernovia · Staff · May 29, 2020 at 6:25 pm

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  And, would they be willing to share a link to the page where they saw those links?

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  staartmees · Member · May 29, 2020 at 6:32 pm

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  Another possibility is the sites you linked to are no longer food blogs.

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  eatfreesimply · Member · May 29, 2020 at 7:11 pm

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  I did wonder about their browser being hijacked or that her computer had malware, but then I went to my site from my computer and found the content when I clicked on a link to my recipe for Cinnamon Rolls.

  Do I need to make my site public again for staff to see the issue?

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · May 29, 2020 at 10:18 pm

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  Ok, I see what’s going on here.

  The good news is, nothing is wrong with your site malware/hack/virus-wise.

  If I go to https://freeeats.wordpress.com/recipes/ and click on Cinnamon Roles, that link points to http://freeeatsfood.com/2011/12/23/celebration-worthy-cinnamon-rolls/

  From what I can tell, you used to run the site under freeeatsfood.com instead of https://freeeats.wordpress.com

  However, freeeatsfood.com expired some time ago and was purchased by someone else with a porn site for some reason or another. That’s just the circle of life on the web; domains expire and someone else buys them.

  Overall, the only thing wrong here is that you have a link pointing to a site that doesn’t exist anymore.

  All you need to do is change that link to https://freeeats.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/celebration-worthy-cinnamon-rolls/

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  eatfreesimply · Member · May 29, 2020 at 10:36 pm

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  Yes! You figured it out. When I changed the site back to a free WordPress site I must have missed updating a few links! That’s so sad about the old url being used for a porn sure. I think Tastespotting and Foodgawker May still have my old urls linked to photos from my blog. Grrr!

  Is it only the cinnamon roll link? How can I check to make sure I haven’t missed any others?

  Thank you!!

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · May 29, 2020 at 10:49 pm

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  The easiest way to check is to search for freeeatsfood.com from https://wordpress.com/pages/freeeats.wordpress.com and https://wordpress.com/posts/freeeats.wordpress.com

  That will bring up and posts or pages which still reference the old domain.