Adult Tube Sites Now Spamming Through Google News

CYBERSPACE—In yet another example of adult marketers inappropriately using the global reach of Google News search results to spam their sites—in this case, adult tube sites—an entity called Media Channel has apparently unwittingly provided space on its website for spam that purports to promote adult tube sites such as Tube8.com, RedTube and PornTube.

Not only are the Media Channel search results—for “porn” and “pornography”—not for legitimate news but spam, the links contained in the spam do not lead to the tube sites being promoted, but to another tube site that appears to contain content that is illegally uploaded and may include depictions of child sexual abuse. The link here is to one of the spam ads in question.

Furthermore, the spamming may be the result of people abusing the social networking privileges of Media Channel. After AVN contacted the website administrator for comment regarding the manner in which their site was being used, a company rep replied, “We just set up a social network. People keep signing up and posting all sorts of spam,” a response consistent with the fact that the “tube” results only recently started appearing on Google News.

As more news entities consider adding social networking capabilities to their websites, inviting surfers to post up not only comments but graphics as well, it might behoove them to either expend the resources necessary to make sure their network is not being abused by spammers or isolate those sections from the Google News spiders.