Webmaster Ethics

Well I have worked as a hired webmaster for lots of companies in past and I am still working for some. Recently I met one of my old client on MSN. He was asking me that can I take a look at his website. I said Yeah Sure.

His website is PR 6 right now and has alexa under 8K, everything was fine except one link. The link was going to an adult affiliate program from the main page. I asked him did he do it himself? He said No.

I asked him does he wants me to remove it. He said Yes. So I asked him for server passwords. I already knew his older password but its my duty to ask him before I enter the password and log into his server.

He gave me the same old password. I said okay. I went in killed the links. While I was in I also noticed that some more links were there on the white background with white color. Someone made it white on the purpose as the link was having font color white attribute.

I asked him again did he do it? He said No. I said okay. Go to your main page and Use CTRL + A [Select All] There were loads of white links in white background over there. So now it was obvious that someone was stealing links from the pages and making money off it.

I said if this is someone from your staff then you can catch them. But for now I will change the password and remove the links. We changed the password and removed all those links.

The links were sold on one popular links marketplace. So we emailed them and got the info that who was the one who was trying to sell them off and what was the paypal email address for receiving the money from those link sales. It was now clear that the guy who was hired as programmer sometime ago was doing it.

He got caught and fired. This type of things are happening and are happening with people almost everyday. Most of them don’t even know that it is happening with them. So its better to check on the guy before hiring him.

Also for professional webmasters and programmers, they should not do this kind of stuff. Once the client gives you their password it is your responsibility to see that no harm is done. There still will be people who have no ethics so expecting good results from them is a waste of time. As a buyer of the service all you can do is just trust the right person and also keep your eyes open. It won’t hurt if you just perform small checks on your own website. After all its your website.

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