75-year-old great-grandmother’s web address taken over by Asian pornographic site

By Hannah Mackenzie

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    JACKSON COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — A Jackson County woman has fallen victim to a website heist.

The published author has used her first, middle and last name as her website’s address for the last 20 years, but she said the domain name was recently taken over by an Asian pornography site. Experts call it “cybersquatting.”

A great-grandmother in her 70s, she was too mortified to speak about it. Her son spoke on her behalf.

“I thought it had to be a mistake or somebody was pulling a prank or hacked her site or something,” he said. “Then, once we started getting into it, it was just more and more frustration.”

According to her son, her name is unique – when you search it online, she is the only one who pops up. He said the website is printed in all her novels, so they can’t just move on and buy a new domain name.

“It’s not like her name is John Smith and there’s 40 million out there,” he said.

Opting for anonymity, he doesn’t want to give away his mother’s identity and, therefore, the website address over fears any extra publicity will add to its popularity – making it harder to get back.

“I don’t want to give them one more traffic hit,” he said.

The family is working with brokers at godaddy.com to track down the new website owner and negotiate a buy back price.

“If not, I don’t even know what kind of legal recourse we’d have,” he said.

Until then, the X-rated content remains up – a namesake the elderly author never wanted.

According to legal site, nolo.com, for a cybersquatting victim in the United States, the best option to fight back is by using an international arbitration system. They say it is typically faster and less expensive than a lawsuit.

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