The Curiosity that is LightHive.com :: The Life of the Traegorn

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The Curiosity that is LightHive.com
Posted Feb 5, 2006 - 16:08:34

I like talking about scam subjects every once and a while, and that theme has resurged today in the form of LightHive.com - but first a little backstory.

So, as we all remember from my entry a few days ago, Xanga and MySpace users just love hotlinking my images. For those unfamiliar with web protocols, I discovered this by looking at my "referer" logs (the people who designed the http specification can't spell). I, of course, continued to check them after that entry. What I was surprised to see was a new site as stealing the graphic I had created just for the entry about image stealing. This made me puzzled. I mean, who would want a usage statistics image showing a large number of Finnish visitors? So, I investigated.

The site that had stolen the image was listed as "xanga[dot]lighthive[dot]com" - and I went to check it out. What I found annoyed the crap out of me. The site is a news aggregator of sorts. See, my site (like almost every blog on the internet) offers an RSS feed (hence the button on the top of the page). This is designed so that people can be told or read a site without actually going there. It really is quite handy, but is meant like most things for personal use. Most sites have a "non-profit use" clause in their RSS policies.

What LightHive.com does is take these feeds (and only these feeds) and build a site around it in an attempt to get more google ad revenue. Similar to a Spam Blog, only without actually blogging new entries itself. LightHive has sites for Xanga, Camaros, pretty much anything you can think of at *.lighthive.com. Except, there is no actual page that just lists what the hell it is (going to just lighthive.com will give you a 404 error).

I tried to find out who runs LightHive.com - but to no avail. The Domain was registered by proxy. But effectively the guy is making money off of sites like mine and that is just not cool at all.

Grrr... More on this later.
- Traegorn

well, I became the tool for the fool to make money...What's the deal?
Some days ago, it links my xanga but I don't know why.Now I got it.
I also find that some Korean watch that site. Maybe the owners are Koreans?
Just a wild guest.
By the way I am from Hong Kong ^^

His site is designed to just take content from as many people as possible. I've been unable to find out ANYTHING about the person hosting the site though -- I've never seen a scam this sophisticated in its obfuscation of identity.

Usually the scammer slips up at some point - and while I may still be able to find out who it is, I've never had to dig this far to find out that sort of information before.

So apparently jimmybuffett[dot]lighthive[dot]com conveniently decided to link to my blog now - it's listed right there at the top as one of the site's favorite blogs. (It's the one called Wasting Away Again if you're curious.)

I was checking my referrers and noticed that I had gotten a hit from them myself. I'd certainly be curious about the identify of whomever is behind this...