Error Page Scam and Shady Hosting Companies

I thought I had seen it all. By now I am pretty much used to the shady practices of o called ‘hosting companies’ that charge clients for domains and hosting space for which they either should not be charging anything or PAY the poor bastard who thinks he actually gets something worth a buck. But what I just came across almost tops all the instant proxy sites on parked domains (thanks for cloaking!) and piles of 300 plus domains under one IP.
While analyzing a new clients site I checked his 404 error page – which is one of my standard procedures. And I could not believe what I found instead of the expected ‘oops’ or sitemap: AdWords advertising showing competitors of my clients!
How do you think it got there? The hosting company created a script that instantly generates a custom 404 page spiked with money-making Google AdWords. And of course the client had no clue ..

404 scam