Daily, hundreds of pornographic and other inappropriate SPAM entries were being posted in their guestbook. "When it was going in direct, everyone was reading it before we realized what was going on. We then had to go in and delete it quickly when we saw what they had done," said Eva DeHart of For Haiti with Love..
They then began diverting the entries so they could be screened. "It got to be hundreds and hundreds a day. We've tried filters and we've tried all kinds of things, and we cannot find a way to get guestbook entries on our Web site now without having to filter through hundreds of pornographic things," DeHart. The time it took to sort through the entries was too much.
After many attempts to solve the problem, they sent out a prayer request. The response was surprising. "I started getting feedback from other Christian organizations about having the same problems with their guestbooks," said DeHart. Many of them have simply given up on having a guestbook.
DeHart believes that Christian Web sites are becoming targets for these kinds of attacks. "I have spoken with a lot of secular Web sites that have guestbooks, and they're not having that problem. But anything having to do with Christianity and religious Web sites seems to be targets for these hackers," said DeHart.
The guestbook had become an exchange of information, encouragement, and experiences. While it didn't benefit the organization monetarily, "it was a nice mission interchange between people who were reading the Web site."
Unless the problem can be solved, For Haiti with Love's guestbook will be removed from the site. We need God's intervention so that the good guys can come up with the technology to be ahead of the bad guys," said DeHart.
