Hiding PBNs

[mrpotato]

I don't really use PBNs much today, but in the past, I've used some wp plugins that no longer exist and are probably risky AF to use today for security purposes. My question to all is, how do you hide PBNs from things like KW tools, and others and is it necessary today?

I know some were using some htaccess code or some version of that. Just curious what the PBN users are using today. Would love to get some feedback from all.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Let me preface my reply by saying I recommend simply staying away from PBNs altogether. It's one of the few ways you can really screw your entire operation up irrevocably these days.

Ultimately it doesn't matter who you hide it from if you can't hide it from Google. There's some simple footprints you never hear people talk about. Let's say you go through 30 different hosting companies to get different IP addresses and all that, and you sign up with the same business email account across them all... look up what an SOA record is (Start of Authority) and see what information it leaks.

Then consider your registrar and WhoIs information and even a privacy layer. What leaks on the WhoIs and can registrars see behind the privacy layer? Google Domains is a registrar, which allows them to be privy to information you may not want them to know.

What about the simple act of using Google Fonts across multiple themes, which are coded poorly enough to load those fonts in the dashboard area. Google can (and they do) manually hunt you down. They can see what IP addresses are loading up Google Fonts in the dashboard area of your zillion Wordpress installs and cross reference them. That's one paranoid example of how they can get you.

These are a few examples. There are tons of other little footprints you'd never imagine that will get you caught. You can't plug a hole you don't even know exists.

Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Search, Youtube, and everything else they offer us for free drops cookies galore on you, too. I don't think they algorithmically use all of this stuff, but if you embarrass them or do something especially egregious (like a very sizable, powerful PBN), I believe they use any means necessary to hunt you down even backwards through time. It's happened to me and they punished sites that used to be mine simply because they could connect data to them.

It's a finetooth comb kind of operation. And they have every right to do it, and the power to do it. That's only part of the reason I say to just avoid private blog networks. The other reason is because the entire internet exists. Why go through all that crap knowing you can't win, that in the end some little hole in your OpSec plan will destroy everything, that there's not really an ROI there...

Why go through all of that for a link, even if it means your competitors can't have it, when you can just do kick ass marketing and get amazing needle-moving links anyways, the likes that your competitors likely won't bother earning either. Anyways, this wasn't a part of your question, and I'm really just typing it for the sake of a newbie reader out there considering venturing down this road. It's time lost you can't get back and everything will be eradicated and radioactive afterwards.