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Site Promises Digg Promotion For Cash
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-09-29
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Looking at the User/Submitter website, it's hard not to think the site, if it is legitimate, is an inevitable development for those who are desperate for a promotion to the front page of the popular news aggregating site, Digg.com.
 | | Site Promises Digg Promotion For Cash |  |
A tip floated into the inbox about User/Submitter, a site that promises to pay Digg users for voting up stories that submitters pay for such favor.
There are a few warning signs that should make a visitor wary of using the site. A glaring typo repeats over several pages. The site returns a 401 Unauthorized message to indexing bots, so despite having been registered in August 2006 a query for the domain in Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com returns no results for it.
Considering what the site promises, its owner would not want it indexed. There is no robots.txt file returned at the site's root, so the hosting provider, NearlyFreeSpeech.net, must be stopping bots before they reach the site.
Submitters would pay $20 plus $1 per desired Digg for the URLs they submit. Digg users are promised 50 cents per Digg they give to a submitted story.
Given the nature of Digg, it seems like someone would have blown the whistle on this site as soon as it became known. Digg has been accused at times of being dominated by a small group of heavy users, and a for-profit component even hinted at for this activity would have exploded through the blogosphere.
There is also the possibility that the site is a simple cash grab. Since it is not being indexed, news of the site would have to be passed around through various message boards and lists, probably ones frequented by black hat types. After collecting some quick cash via PayPal, less the pay as you go hosting fee paid to NearlyFreeSpeech, the site's backer could simply move on to the next gig.
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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