What's up with americatimes.org? | Hacker News Reader

What's up with americatimes.org?

32 pointsd0gbyt313 comments

I recently found an article on this website ( http://americatimes.org/ ) via Google. Whilst reading I noticed a weird adjective. After reading/clicking through the site a bit more I found that basically every article seemed real, but slightly randomized with odd/negative nouns/adjectives.

After some google searches I found it to be copy of the actual magazine website http://businessinsider.com

Then I noticed the frontpage top header still contained a small advertisement for the used Wordpress theme. On top of that there seem to be a whole bunch of artwork load errors/glitches floating around. These seem to have to do with the mirroring process.

My first thought was that this site might be some school project. But I couldn't find any real clues supporting this. Really only things that pointed away from that idea. Another theory, much more fun of course, would be that this is some kind of automatically generating anti USA/West propaganda site! And if you really want to get all tin foil hatty about this. How about this being a new type of a numbers station? Where the 'random' words are inserted in this mirror of another, actually existing, news site and these alterations form some kind of code. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Numbers_station )

Any Thoughts?

http://www.americaherald.com is another site like that. I would have never known it existed, until someone randomly emailed my wife and let her know that the site was using a picture of her taken off of a university website and saying she was a journalist working for them. It was actually kind of creepy.

I was surprised that a site like this could make it into Google News results.

Maybe an artifact of some online reputation scrubbing service? Procedurally create a site that looks legit enough to get some Google juice, which you can then use as a source for masking unflattering search results? Might explain the celebrity connection.

Obviously this kind of naïve adjective-permutation seems unlikely to fool Google today (although you said it came up in a search result for you?), but maybe at some point in the past it was effective. Does anyone know if the recent date listed in the ICANN record is a reliable indicator of initial regisration? Or would that just be when it was last re-upped?

Might be interesting to wget these two mirrors and diff their content?

Interesting theory. Seems to makes sense if that company (Acumium) is specialized in online marketing. But the articles dont seem to really do much in terms of useful change. Also, it does it on all content. Not targeted.

Also, I dont see a reason for the wp-login to be in Vietnamese? And why would both mirrors' domain WHOIS link to existing people, one being 'famous'?

And it feels like there are just too many oddities (see my other comment) for it to just be some way to obfuscate/manipulate Google results?

Also, its still running. The article I found it through was very recent. Judging from the difference in timestamps on articles between the copies and the real site it seems something deliberate is being done.

ps; The site actually came up when I looked up the assistant chief of police of Detroit and added something like the word 'retard' haha. After watching a video statement by this guy I thought he couldnt possibly be qualified to be the 2nd in command on a police force in a city like that. Of course I was wrong.

Holy.... I googled "online reputation scrubbing", which you mentioned, and found one article: http://nymag.com/news/features/online-reputation-management-...

It RANDOMLY mentions Chris O'Donnell (one of the 2 domains i posted about is registered to his wife! See my long comment). Im starting to get really freaked out.

What else I found up til now:

The footer on the front page contains a wp-login link in Vietnamese (according to google translate).

A whois gives some weird info ( http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=americatimes.org ) (at least the combination is strange): Registrant Name:Daniel Costello (too common a name, more on him below) Registrant Organization:Tammy S Meyer (actually owner of the accompanying address; see below) Registrant Street: 18853 Leisure Avenue (some pretty remote farm type place: https://www.google.nl/maps/place/18853+Leisure+Ave,+Honey+Cr... ) Registrant City:Honey Creek Registrant State/Province:IA Name Server:NS1.VISIONDNS.NET (also Vietnamese) Email: americatimes@yahoo.com (errrr, yeah..)

A google of the street address turned up some kind of land/parcel registration from the 'Pottawattamie County Assessor', actually registered to the same name, 'Tammy S Meyer': http://pottco.org/x/card?map=on&parcel=764319400002

A search for "americatimes@yahoo.com" turns up only 3 hits, 2 of which the same WHOIS result, but one also containing the name 'Daniel Costello'. This time associated with 'acumium.com', a 'Website Development, Ecommerce, Online Marketing' company. On his company website profile ( http://www.acumium.com/about/meet-our-team/dan-costello.cmsx ) it states the following: "Before Acumium, Dan served in the U.S. Army as a Signals Intelligence Team Leader for almost four years, which explains his focus on Acumium’s security and policies. He left the service as one of the _most highly decorated_ members of the 2nd Armored Calvary." Now I get this tingly suspicious feeling in my special place. Why would he use a Vietnamese Wordpress?! Or be the Registrant Contact for a domain hosted in Vietnam ?? (123.30.176.66, http://tracert.com/run?host=123.30.176.66&gw=24 ) Or be associated with this website??

This is where things started to get really odd. If you google one of the lines/titles of the articles, you find that the site is an _exact_ mirror (errors and all) of http://usastar.org/. Which whois looks like this: Registrant Contact Name: caroline odonnell Organization: caroline odonnell Mailing Address: 14915 camarosa drive, pacific palisades CA 90067 US (some crazy ass mansion: https://www.google.nl/maps/@34.03464,-118.521481,3a,76.9y,34... )

After another google search, this mansion was apparently bought by actor Chris O'Donnel (the guy from NCIS LA!): http://www.bergproperties.com/blog/actor-chris-odonnell-pays... His wife is named Caroline: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000563/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, but this is really weirding me out. So where better to ask than HN to get to the bottom of this :D Any thoughts?

I'd say you are correct.

Looks like the work of an article spinner (and not a very good one at that).

I dont see any ads on the sites. Wouldnt one expect those to be there?

Perhaps there's an advantage to building up traffic before enabling ads (either because setting up the ad network account is inconvenient or the ad networks are flagging new sites as suspicious).

"Autralia" haha

Lol, yea.. Im guessing its a localized version of the original site. And since its crawled from a vietnamese/australian server thats what the menus look like (from where I live I get different geographical categories). But I have no explanation for the misspelling..

Their header is "americal news"

Also they are using a theme with a link back to a premium theme site.

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