One of the most important tasks currently sitting on my plate is the laying down of the next year's editorial schedule for XBIZ World magazine — a chore / privilege primarily focusing on what each month's "special section" will be.

If I get it right — if despite changing market conditions, rapidly evolving technologies and a developing legal environment, I can lay out 12 relevant topics this far in advance — topics that will still be relevant a year-and-a-half from now — then my readers will make more money; operate more safely and efficiently; and enjoy a real competitive advantage over those folks that don't read XBIZ World.

If I get it wrong, well, we'll have some cool party pics in the back, with at least one nice set of tits for your enjoyment…

While some of you might have considered that last remark flippant, it really speaks to the core of my dilemma: relevancy. You see, what is relevant to one reader / operator may be of no concern to another — especially in an industry as diverse as ours. No mere question of balance, such as "how many pages of pics?" or "what ratio between shots of known 'players' and the aforementioned nice tits?" the question of relevancy strikes at the heart of the changing needs of my readers.

For example, take the "affiliate program" — companies that may have a few years ago relied 100 percent on affiliates as traffic sources, may today actually receive less than 10 percent of their traffic from affiliates. Their informational needs are very different today than they were even two years ago — and their needs will be different again next year.

Do you care about increasing traffic to your website? Going mobile? Shooting web-centric content or delivering it via new distribution mechanisms such as memory chips? What about copyright law and content piracy? What about server technology, scripts or the latest Photoshop plugin of use to porn peddlers? Heck, maybe you're even interested in the latest "hot" wines and cheeses, as some of our competitors seem to think. I'll get a dozen chances to hit or miss, while trying to benefit as many of you as possible.

This is all "inside baseball" as they say, but I use it to set the stage for what's really on my mind: the total diversity of players in this marketspace.

You see, as part of the relevancy discussion, the questions of defining who is part of the adult industry; who is making money; and who is likely to profit in the future all arise — and despite the forces of convergence, the face of the industry still ranges from the top-tier corporations down to the lone gallery submitter or search engine maven toiling in isolated obscurity — but still making money in adult.

Although there is nothing new to this industrial stratification, the overall feeling I get today is that many of these groups are increasingly isolationist, "doing their own thing" and not sharing as openly as they once might have. At the same time, other levels are trying to open their doors as widely as possible. This presents the problems of trying to target niche audiences with very specific needs, while drawing on an informational pool that may not be as willing to reveal all of its secrets as it once so generously did. The "coopetition" that online adult was once so remarkable for has been largely replaced by pure competition — and in some ways, that trend has diminished our "nobility."

These changes are the natural course of business, however, and not at all limited to the realm of adult entertainment.

In a recent blog posting at XBIZ entitled, "Business Is Business," Webbilling's JoeD offered some sage words of wisdom on the current scene in online adult, and he also discusses the broader Internet and some of its more interesting evolutionary processes. Take a few moments to read it; and then ask yourself; "Why indeed does AOL not own the world?"

Some of the lessons of AOL, which are amply mirrored in the adult space, include the fact that even with a compelling product or service offering; a nearly competition-free marketspace; and a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign that eliminates all competition, a company may still end up as little more than a historical footnote in what was once a market space that it "owned."

But does that mean that they're not making money? No, it's just that their focus has broadened into other venues and opportunities; either as the cause or result of their toppling from the throne of online access — an arena which was once its core business.

These same dynamics of change are being played out across our industry and with operators of all shapes and sizes. What's of interest to me as a TGP or blog owner isn't likely going to be of interest to you as a billing company owner; likewise, a guy running a tube site may not be as interested in learning about employee handbooks tailored to adult companies as are some of our other readers.

My job is to see the TGP owner incorporating elements of a tube site; charging an access fee and thus needing to know about billing services as well; and then growing to the point where staffing issues require formalized policies — while trying to create a worthwhile read for all involved at every step of the way and beyond…

Now that you know how I'll be spending my weekend, here's your chance to influence the process by letting me know what topics you'd like to see covered by XBIZ in 2010. Add a comment below, or drop me an email — but regardless of your input, wish me luck in coming up with the tools and information that we'll all need to succeed.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was recently contacted by a Dutch author working on an article concerning any negative economic impacts currently being faced by the adult entertainment industry: he is seeking information on the personal toll being felt by operators at all levels, in what is being seen as a struggling global economy.

This got me thinking of the broader industry and how it is faring. While my wife has seen a modest reduction in her adult income, I've thankfully persevered through much of the hysteria, and not been as badly impacted as some others within the industry and beyond.

Although the prospect of losing a major client is always ever-present, cutbacks at companies of all sizes have left many freelancers increasingly worried about their next pay check; and many industry staff members involuntarily entering a dismal job market.

It is this "worry" that is toxic and the basis for what is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For example, when surfers forego the luxury of a paysite membership, there is a resulting impact on program and affiliate sales — and a ripple through to the program's clients, such as traffic and hosting companies, content and advertising vendors.

Some of this process is involuntary, such as when a drying credit market puts limits on the consumer's ability to have enough funds available for a transaction — and to keep those funds available for recurring transactions in an era of bank failures and consumers cutting up their credit cards and paying down their bloated balances.

But it is the voluntary "fear" of spending that causes the economy to worsen; and the mainstream media is seemingly doing its best to drive this fear — but is it warranted?

I've just returned from the annual XBIZ Summer Forum in Las Vegas, where I had the opportunity to converse with a wide variety of operators and industry insiders and where I gathered quite a bit of anecdotal evidence about the current state of the adult market — the upshot of which I'd characterize as "cautiously optimistic."

You see, lots of people are indeed making money in adult — and while the bottom line isn't as fat as it once was there is still a very good living to be made by those who are innovative and work hard.

New paysites are being launched and making sales; adult mobile revenues are steadily climbing and showing surprising growth in some markets; and a slew of mainstream companies are bringing new technologies into the adult arena.

In fact, current XBIZ polling suggests that over the past six months, paysite subscription sales have improved for many operators, with slightly more than half reporting steady or increased sales for the first half of the year.

In short, I believe that things are not as bad as they seem and are in fact improving.

This isn't to discount the pain being felt by many in the industry, but much of that pain cannot be blamed on the wider economy and is the result of other market pressures such as piracy, the glut of free content on the Internet, antiquated business models and intense competition.

Sure, the party is over — and with it, much of the "fun," "energy," and "excitement" that attracted many of us to online adult in the first place — and in its place is the endless toiling that was always there, under the surface, but experienced by all who succeeded and awaiting all who would succeed today.

The mental image that I took from the Summer Forum was that of a scene from the cult-classic film, "Conan the Barbarian" — where young Conan was sold into slavery and chained to a great wheel; trudging along in an endless circle with his fellow captives and damned to pushing an enormous wooden bar that drove a giant grist mill. A group of smiling boys when they arrived, the ensuing years of tough times took their toll, and at the end, only Conan survived — a grown man: strong, determined, toughened by years of experience — and still endlessly turning that same gear.

Likewise, many factors have conspired to thin our ranks — and the dark harvest is not yet complete; but there will be survivors: stronger, wiser and better suited to the task at hand.

Step up and start pushing: Lets move forward together, one step at a time... And perhaps just like Conan, you'll find that someday, freedom and limitless opportunities await you.

When you "delete" documents and other files from your computer, are they really gone?

Surprisingly, the answer in many cases may be "no."

While this can be great news for someone who accidentally deletes a file and needs to retrieve it; it can be quite problematic for those charged with securing sensitive business data or other confidential, personal or private files.

With the upsurge in active corporate espionage; retaliatory acts by disgruntled employees (including the appeal of quick dollars from competitors in a down economy), and myriad other vulnerabilities, it behooves computer users to ensure that the files they think have been erased from their computers, truly have been.

In the July issue of XBIZ World magazine, we feature a brief look at a software product called DiskDigger — a free forensic analysis utility that can scan all forms of media and recover "deleted" files. As part of writing that article, I put DiskDigger (along with my CCleaner utility and other tools) to the test in an effort to see just how good a job a top-rated piece of consumer software is able to do at scanning a disk drive and retrieving deleted files.

The results were impressive and eye-opening.

I first deleted all files on the test drive, using Windows Explorer. I then ran CCleaner on the drive to "fully erase" it — or so I hoped. Wrong. DiskDigger revealed thousands of files still on the disk drive. An NSA-level seven pass regimen still left recoverable files.

I ran a quick format of the drive, but still, DiskDigger uncovered (and was able to easily retrieve) "deleted" photos, videos, Word documents and more. I then ran a full format of the drive — yet the results were the same: DiskDigger was able to retrieve files and show thumbnail previews of everything it found.

While each of my disk erasure attempts resulted in fewer recoverable files, it's clear that the amount of data left over even after a robust cleansing regimen poses a serious personal and corporate vulnerability.

It was only after I laid the full Gutmann with a 35 pass free space wipe on that drive did DiskDigger finally have nothing to show for itself — though few computers indeed ever receive that extreme a level of deleted data sterility.

During this whole process, I kept thinking "If this is what free gets you, how much more effective are the tools of professional criminals, government agencies and private sector / workplace spies?"

The answer is simple: "good enough that you need to take deleted data security seriously."

Here's a quick commonsense tip for webmasters: "RTFM" as they say — but don't just stop there — as there's an abundance of helpful information, tips and tricks available online for almost every major software application. And "helpful" is the word if you consult all of the available documentation before undertaking a new project, as I am quickly learning.

A case in point being the resurrection of an old friend:

Like many of you, the economy has me reevaluating my assets and liabilities and identifying areas for improvement; and as part of this process, I've been eyeing my modest domain name portfolio and some of my un- and underdeveloped properties — one of which is among my oldest domains. I've had several old-school projects there, but the backup site was in need of an upgrade to perhaps squeeze a few more sales out of it…

An anachronism in an age of tubes and haptics, the old site seems quaint in our web 2.0 world; but rather than feeling like a kid who just found a corpse in the woods and is now poking at it with a stick to see what will happen, I'm trying to see this possible evolution more in terms of a kid using a stick to stir the embers of his campfire — and renewing its blaze with a little care and some fresh fuel.

In this case, the fresh fuel was an overdue update of the site's backend software to the latest versions, allowing dramatic improvements in both form and functionality — if I can figure out how to implement some of the more advanced features.

Previously, I'd simply install a new piece of software and then bull through the inevitable problems as I attempted to bend it to my will. This time, however, I decided to visit the company's support forum before installing the software; where I spent a good part of my weekend looking through the thousands of message board threads — seeking answers to questions that I knew I would also have as I deployed this project, and recording them in a text file for later — along with a variety of useful code snippets and bookmarks.

I also found ideas: ideas, based upon the questions that other webmasters were asking; revealing configurations I hadn't thought of (or thought possible) as well as setups that I now know to avoid: I learned that some of the things I might have tried simply were not doable using this software — knowledge that spared me many hours of frustration and harsh language, I'm sure. I also discovered techniques that I'll have to learn more about.

At the end of the day, while I could have found a more entertaining way to spend a weekend, I saved myself untold hours and will have a better website as a result as well — a much better investment of my time than had I just put up the site then scrambled to find fixes for the unavoidable "alpha launch" problems.

While we all know the importance of proper business planning, investing more time and resources into infrastructural planning and optimization can help immeasurably.

Recently I encountered an interesting marketing twist, where, as a new DirecTV subscriber, I was offered the chance to visit the "rebates" page on the company's website, in order to select the rebate offer that I wanted.

My choices were simple, or so it seemed: I could either receive a $21/month discount on my bill for a year (highlighted at the top of the page) or receive a $16/month discount (not as well emphasized and at the bottom of the page).

Clearly, most consumers hitting this page would select the $21/month rebate and feel quite good about the savings.

Personally, I can't recall ever being offered a choice in the type or amount of the rebate being offered by a merchant, so I looked at the offer more closely: why would anyone want to choose a $16 monthly discount instead of a $21 discount — and what was the difference (if any)? Was it an issue of service contract length, or (no porn pun intended), my package size?

No, it was a matter of whether or not I wanted to receive promotional emails from DirecTV and its various marketing partners.

They'll pay you $5 a month to spam you — which at that point, it's hard to call it spam, since you not only asked for it, but you're getting paid to take it.

While most companies simply add an opt-in checkbox that they hope you'll either check, or leave pre-checked, this company is incentivizing consumers to become part of their advertising chain in a way that has to be beneficial to advertisers who get highly-targeted prospects; to DirecTV which is earning ad revenues; and to the consumer who is paid for viewing (or at least receiving) the mailings.

I get enough unwanted email as it is, thank you; and my fear of just how many ads these guys might feel that $5 justifies, combined with my lack of desire for dealing with spam, made me choose the lower rebate amount.

No doubt, I am in the minority in choosing this option; and while my inbox is lighter, I can imagine that DirecTV's coffers are heavier from this deal and the ad revenues it must be generating.

Perhaps there's a way you might incorporate such tiered discount offers in your operation such as on cancel pages and emails?

Make it fair, compelling and put the option you want customers to choose in big bold print at the top of the page — the results may add significantly to your bottom line.

They say that technology is advancing at an alarming rate and they are of course correct — but that doesn't mean that we can afford to forget our roots.

A case in point is the electronic foolishness I was up to the other day, attempting to cleanse one of my servers from all traces of the successful attacks against it by both Russian and Chinese hackers; and to restore it to top running condition — a difficult task for someone as technically inept as myself, and who is more than happy to let a hosting company worry about such "plumbing" issues. But hey, hosting plans change, and the level of inspection I wanted was going to be up to me.

So there I was, my PuTTY client open, providing a black, soulless window into the inner depths of my server — its command line staring back at me, waiting for my input. "Oh dear, I just know I'm gonna type in something stupid and kill this thing..." the thought flashing through my head, I was transported back to the early '90s, when I learnt HTML using DOS Edit, because the luxury of MS Windows was still off in the future.

But this wasn't a web page I was designing, where a quick edit could fix a problem; this was pure monkey business, poking around the box' various systems and file structures and hoping that I wouldn't have to call tech support and say "sorry squire, it seems I broke it" — they have, after all, heard that from me before...

I took a deep breath, and typed in one of the very few commands I remembered: "ls –l" — and with that, I was on my way, probing the server's various nooks and crannies; deleting files that were corrupted or no longer needed, until I was satisfied that most if not all of the offending material was removed. Well, at least all that I could find.

During the process, my hesitation was overcome by nostalgia, as I contemplated the dichotomy of today's flashy Web 2.0 landscape — and the façade that is merely a skin on a much older architecture; where despite the shininess of the showroom, an operator will still sometimes have to venture into a dark basement to smack a rusty pipe with a wrench.

It was, however, this mix of old and new that made the process infinitely easier for me, as I made use of my dual-monitor setup to run PuTTY on one monitor and to keep a dozen browser tabs open on the other — each displaying the results of various Google searches, such as "WTF is FreeBSD?" and "How do you recursively remove a directory?"

Simple enough for many, but for those readers who don't know what I'm talking about, trust me — it doesn't matter how often you use your computer for sex, you really don't want to be this intimate with one.

While I'm still eyeing my server with a fair degree of suspicion, it now seems to be a clean slate — a blank canvas awaiting the master's inspiration (and backup files).

This is really the true essence of being a Webmaster: seeing the possibilities and calling them out of the void — the world truly at your fingertips. And while the world, the web, and technology have all dramatically evolved over the past few years, there is still much opportunity to be found and success to be had. It all starts with a clean slate and taking what's old and making it new again.

Whether it's a matter of law or the simple standards by which a game is played, rules define many of the elements of our society and our lives as members of that society. Ostensibly, this is for the protection and betterment of us all — but on occasion, the declaration and enforcement of these rules can be most troublesome indeed; leading to nuisance lawsuits and other legal, political, personal and corporate woes…

For example, many of my readers are adult webmasters and others involved in the adult entertainment and new media industries. If you fit into that category, then I have a quick question for you: have you read your Internet Service Provider's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) lately (if ever)?

I've recently been studying the Terms of Service (TOS) and AUP used by a variety of local, regional and national ISPs and have noticed a wide variance in the language that covers the accessing of, and posting of, adult content. While all condemn the posting of "obscene" material, which in this observer's opinion is fine, as "obscene" content is now illegal in the U.S. and within many other jurisdictions — it is the more restrictive content prohibitions that some ISPs have which I find troubling: words like "pornographic," "indecent" and "offensive" — all describing content that may be objectionable to some and not appropriate for minors, but is nonetheless legal and Constitutionally protected.

Well, protected from governmental censorship anyway; but not, it appears, from the whims of corporate board members — many of whom, like the countless shareholders they represent — are avid fans of our wares. You'd think they'd want to extend to their customers the same level of privacy they would want for themselves.

But not everyone cares about privacy — and there's a lot of "busy bodies" out there.

For example, my lovely wife Dawn and I are in the midst of moving into a new home and I've been reviewing the rule book from the Home Owner's Association. The book has to be 100 pages thick; filled with gems such as how every home must have at least a two-car garage, and that you must actually park in it. They (the HOA) understand that when moving, many folks like to use their garage to store boxes and such and park their car in the driveway — they just want to hear from me (in writing) how long it will take for me to unpack and start parking in my nice new garage.

No kidding.

They can even tow my car out of my own driveway (at my expense) if I get in the habit of parking in it. You can park eight cars in my driveway — and I have an association-approved graveled RV parking area alongside the driveway that is big enough for the largest of motor homes, as well — but I can't park my car outside my garage without a permit from the council. Heck, I'm already screwed for installing the sweetest array of satellite dishes this side of Wright-Patterson without prior written authorization…

But it's the privacy issue that gets me.

You see, the HOA wants to make sure that you're complying with all their rules, so they put severe restrictions on the type, size and location of fencing to ensure that everyone could see through their neighbor's lots. With a requirement of "visually open" fencing (think chain link) and a maximum height of five feet, our total lack of privacy is assured.

Given the enormous size of some of our windows, and the silliness of some of our antics around the yard, I'm sure we'll be the talk of the neighborhood — a further blow to our privacy and the quality of life we're seeking.

But in today's world, who cares? Privacy over what you do; what you read and look at online; where you shop; what you buy and how you pay for it; who you vote for and who you work for, is nonexistent — your business is now everyone's business — and when someone makes something their business, they'll make rules to govern it and try to keep it all neat and tidy in a uniform little box.

The moral of the story is that rules do indeed govern many aspects of our lives and our businesses — rules that other people make and that we have to follow. Responsible operators will review the latest regulations, terms and AUPs surrounding their various infrastructure holdings; such as web hosting and access providers, local licensing and zoning — and yes, even the reams of regulations promulgated by your HOA. It's better than waking up in the morning to find you've been terminated over a policy violation.

For many adult entertainment operators, one thing has become abundantly clear over the past several years — while evolving business models may help lead to corporate stability, it'll take another quantum shift in technology to bring the next cash cow to the table.

Vying for this coveted masturbatory milestone are two major contenders: haptics and 3D on the web. While in this observer's opinion, the killer app will be one that unites haptics and 3D (with mobile-enabled live video chat and geo-targeted social networking), each of these technologies individually is already enhancing carnal communications.

Let's take a closer look at one of these technologies and its impact on adult entertainment — the growing use of 3D imaging.

When talking about 3D, it's perhaps natural to conjure images of 1950's monster movies, with the 3D glasses given to audience goers and their red and blue lenses; or of "cartoon" images and other graphics, such as those on modern videogame consoles; but photos and videos can also be produced today using a variety of special 3D systems at the lens, camera and/or processing levels — with sometimes mixed results.

But those results are getting better — much better — and a rapidly growing number of mainstream and adult productions are now employing 3D; and eyeing the web as one of the vehicles via which this content may be delivered.

As previously reported by XBIZ, the Khronos Group, in response to a proposal from Mozilla, has announced an initiative to create an open, royalty-free standard for bringing accelerated 3D graphics to the web. The Khronos "Accelerated 3D on Web" working group is considering various measures including employing OpenGL within web browser software to enable cross-platform 3D-capable web applications.

"With increasing performance, JavaScript is positioned to be a viable programming language for classes of applications currently written in C and C++," stated a Khronos press release. "Graphics developers targeting large audiences through web applications would be well-served by bringing additional graphics capabilities [to] the web platform, particularly the ability to work with 3D."

According to the group, OpenGL is available on all desktop operating systems, while OpenGL ES is being used by an increasingly wide variety of embedded platforms as their native graphics API. It is also now being used to provide the new 3D features within the latest release of Adobe's perennially popular Photoshop software, CS4.

The first fruits of the Khronos Group's labors should be visible in the next full release of the Firefox web browser — leading some observers to believe that 3D on the web will be coming sooner than later, and will be helped along by the hands of many supporters and the various resources they bring to the table.

"With more and more content moving to the web and JavaScript getting faster every day, the time is right to create an open, general purpose API for accelerated 3D graphics on the web," Google's Engineering Director Matt Papakipos said. "Google looks forward to offering its expertise in graphics and web development to this discussion."

"Social networks could create 3D chatrooms and retailers could provide proper 3D visualizations of their products," Forrester research analyst Paul Jackson said. "If you think about the traditional browsing experience of flat pages and links this is not a natural way to interact. People are much more used to walking around and picking things up so a 3D browser could lead eventually to a more naturalistic way of interaction."

But it all comes back to porn — without which, the development and adoption of 3D technology could take years longer…

Commenting on one of his recent 3D productions, Dominic Ford stated that "while someone with a nice body obviously takes a great 2D photo, 3D photos and video gives so much more detail about their bodies: How rounded are his biceps? How do his shoulder muscles curve?"

"Another thing that really comes across in 3D is skin texture," Ford added.

With hi-definition video already delivering incredible textures, the added dimension of going 3D is sure to make the viewer experience "pop" — especially when large screen digital displays; immersive headsets; and the addition of haptics is taken into account.

It is making the viewer feel as though he's "part of the action" that drives all of these technologies; or as Ford put it, "You really see and feel the full thrust of penetration in a way you simply can't in 2D."

And for adult web surfers, there is no better way to become "part of the action" than through one-on-one interaction, such as that offered by live cam affiliate program AdultWebmasterEmpire, which jumped on the 3D bandwagon by adding 3D video chat services to its LiveJasmin.com amateur webcam community — with an upsell offer for the required glasses, indicating another of the revenue streams that 3D content provides.

Of course, technology being what it is, even everyday home users can get in on the fun, with the release of products like Wazabee's 3DeeCamera solution for the iPhone, now available from the Apple App Store. According to the company, "3DeeCamera enables you to create 3D images using your built-in iPhone camera. Take two side-by-side photographs or choose two stereo-pairs from storage to easily generate stunning 3D images by shifting, rotating and scaling the image pairs. Immediately create and share 3D images with friends, family or anyone using an iPhone."

You might have heard about Wazabee — its 3DeeShell snap-on device for the iPhone is being used by Pink Visual to provide "glasses free" 3D viewing of the mobile adult site, iPinkVisualPass.com.

"Shooting content for 3D is challenging and a bit resource-intensive, but when you look at the final product, it's easy to see what the current 3D buzz is about," Kim Kysar, brand and product manager for Pink Visual, said. "This isn't like the cheesy, 1970s 3D viewing experience that a lot of us grew up with. This is cutting edge stuff. The best part is that there's no need to wear those awful glasses."

When it's that easy, and increasing in quality and availability with each passing year, the future of 3D in adult makes other forms of content truly seem flat in comparison. Now if someone can just combine all of these new technologies into the next killer app for adult.

Perhaps you can blame the declining economy as the culprit behind the escalating bad behavior being exhibited throughout certain segments of cyberspace, where everything from fraudulent billing to extortion and beyond awaits the unwary surfer with increasing regularity — a situation that sometimes hits too close to home.

For example, a recent XBIZ News story detailed a German federal Office for Information Security (BSI) report of the "growing and persistent array of online threats that continues to outwit even the savviest of users."

"The situation is serious — it is even more catastrophic than we feared," said Hartmut Isselhorst of the BSI. "We are all being attacked. As soon as we go online, we become the target of attacks."

And right they are.

I've been a heavy Internet user and webmaster since 1993, and in that time, I have had one website hacked (damn kids in Amsterdam deleted my site and put a photo of a bong on my homepage …) and had my workstation disabled by KAK, which left me freaked out by it shutting down and displaying a notice that "kagou anti krosoft says not today!"

But that was a long, long time ago, and my security has dramatically improved since then to the point that I don't get too worried about visiting some of the, shall we say, "shadier" online neighborhoods that my work sometimes finds me in.

Until now, that is.

What has me concerned is two recent attacks that hit within a matter of days of each other — events about which I'm still dealing with the fallout.

First up was an infection that left me with a copy of Spyware Protect 2009 on my system, displaying its ominous "Warning! You have spyware on your computer — click here to purchase our tool to remove it!" dialog boxes and Windows system-like behaviors to make it look "official." The folks behind this did a great job of presenting their offer, and the persistent little bugger took quite a bit of effort (and bad language) to remove — being entrenched in my browser, task bar and throughout my system's files.

As part of this attack, a host of other nasty mutants compromised some of my anti-virus and firewall protection in an attempt to "pry the door open" for further attacks, which was a most disheartening experience as I watched my fortress' walls crumbling.

As a side note, for the many people who doubtless bought into this software scam, far from removing the threat, the Spyware Protect 2009 installation would simply heap even more digital atrocities onto the hapless user's computer.

Did I pick something up on an adult site? Maybe, but I visit at least as many mainstream websites, and they often are more attractive to hackers.

Regardless of where the actual attack took place, those initiating these attacks are online extortionists who seek to use fear as a weapon to drive sales. And while I didn't make a purchase, I was scared — scared at the thought of losing all of my data (how current are those backups?) and of the loss of any sensitive information of value to identity thieves or other criminals. What else was my computer doing now — things that I didn't even know about — like launching "zombie" attacks on other computers?

It took a lot of Googling to get things straightened out, plus the use of some new tools such as Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware solution, as well as the loss of a few hours and a lot of stress to overcome this infection, which was far more sophisticated in its attack than the previous KAK virus that I had. Bastards.

And you'd think that I'd learned my lesson and would be more wary, but you'd be wrong — and so it was that two days after cleaning out my system I found myself upgrading an old WordPress installation on my server to the latest version, which has a nifty FTP client to upload and install plugins. But plugins by whom, from where — and how safe are they?

The one I installed that day using said fancy admin panel asked for my FTP username and password — not the first piece of software I've installed to do so. And you might have guessed it, but the next morning, all of the index pages on all of the sites on that server (and their subdirectories) had malicious commie code embedded in them, trying to send my visitors unknowing-like to domains that ended in .ru.

Encoded HTML redirects placed in my <head>s using JavaScript and "eval" commands, plus encrypted scripts injected into the PHP contained in my <body> tags. Had they done it by hand and gone back to check the pages, they could be wreaking havoc on anyone who landed on one of my pages. Sloppy hackers and their automation — stray snippets of their malicious code were left visible on some of my pages, and if not for this glaring red flag, I might not have noticed the attack — at least for some time.

Changing my FTP password stopped them, but once again, hours are lost and sleepless nights spent restoring corrupted pages from backup files and scouring folders for other signs of attack.

While malicious website attacks are nothing new, this apparent increase in the incidence and severity of these attacks doesn't bode well for e-merchants, mainstream or adult, who rely on a customer's trust factor when dealing with virtual entities.

At a time when every sale counts, marketers and others using malicious tools to further their means and bottom lines are a threat to all operators — and a threat that must be confronted and addressed.

For my part, I'm going to beef up security and push ahead.

One of the lesser-known stories within the adult Internet is the work that ASACP, the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, is doing on behalf of the industry in support of the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography (FCACP). ASACP has been an active participant in the FCACP since the early days of its inception and has contributed to the Coalition in several important ways.

Formed in 2006, the FCACP is an organization which specifically targets commercial child pornography (CCP), and is sponsored by the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and its sister agency, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It is a collaborative effort between private sector, law enforcement and non-governmental agencies (NGOs).

According to the Coalition, this groundbreaking marriage of private industry and the public sector in the battle against commercial child pornography brings together leading banks, credit card companies and processors, third party payment companies and other Internet services companies.

The key to its success in combating CCP is in the bottom line, where the FCACP works to disrupt "the economics of commercial child pornography by following the flow of funds and shutting down the payments accounts that are being used by these illegal enterprises."

Simply put, when a site is found to be selling CP, these guys close the bank accounts.

The Coalition detailed some of its efforts in a white paper entitled, "A Case Study on How the Private Sector, Law Enforcement and NGO's Converge to Fight Commercial Child Pornography," which was presented at the recent World Congress III Against Sexual Exploitation of Children & Adolescents — an event held by the Government of Brazil, UNICEF, ECPAT, and the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this past November in Rio de Janeiro. The previous two Congresses were held in Stockholm in 1996 and Yokohama in 2001.

The white paper describes the growth of commercial child pornography into a multi-billion dollar industry where "children around the world are being used as commodities for sale or trade."

"In order to operate these businesses, criminal organizations must access the infrastructure of established industries. As a result, there are financial services companies and Internet services companies that have unwittingly or wittingly become involved in this nefarious business," the paper stated. "Accordingly, it is imperative that the private sector join the efforts of law enforcement and NGO's in fighting commercial child pornography."

And join in they have.

FCACP members include America Online, American Express, HSBC, Google, Visa, MasterCard, Microsoft, Capital One, Citigroup, PayPal, Discover, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, Western Union, First Data Corporation, Yahoo! — and a host of others…

As evidence of the scope of the problem these partners face, in the decade that it has run its CyberTipline, NCMEC reportedly processed more than 600,000 reports — including those covering more than 5 million images of sexually exploited children. The battle is an uphill one, as well, with NCMEC reporting increases in reports of CP, online enticement, child prostitution, child sex tourism, and other crimes against children.

The Coalition recognizes that it's impractical to prosecute everyone involved in this heinous trade simply by weight of "the sheer number of individuals engaged in this world-wide commercial industry … no matter how aggressive law enforcement is." Thus its approach of using reports from the CyberTipline to identify the billing companies and accounts used by illegal CCP websites and then shutting down those revenue streams in cooperation with international law enforcement efforts.

According to the Coalition, a number of positive trends indicate the success that it and law enforcement are having in the fight against CCP this way, citing for example the increasing difficulty of using a credit card for these transactions.

"If law enforcement is having trouble making these transactions, it stands to reason that the consumer is as well," the white paper states, "And the purchase price for these images of sexually exploited children has risen dramatically — an indication that FCACP efforts may be affecting the profitability of these sites."

With significant progress reported in the United States, the FCACP is working on expanding its model to other countries to address this global problem, with a focus on Europe and the Asian-Pacific region. But the widespread location of these illegal website operators isn't the only challenge to be overcome.

The FCACP Technology Challenges Working Group addresses the continual evolution and growing technical sophistication of the businesses which operate CCP sites — especially in the areas of website hosting and alternative payment processing methods — in order to provide the level of technical expertise needed to fight these operations.

ASACP's Director of Technology & Forensic Research, Tim Henning, has served on both the Analytics Working Group since the Coalition's inception and is also a member of the Technology Challenges Working Group. Henning also participated in special working groups dealing specifically with the abuse of adult entertainment billing systems by CCP criminal organizations.

"The ASACP child pornography reporting hotline has received over 400,000 reports since August of 2003 and has forwarded over 7,000 fully investigated reports, otherwise known as 'Red Flag Reports,' of suspected child pornography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as well as the F.B.I. and other international hotlines and law enforcement agencies," Henning told XBIZ. "This data has been an integral part of the analytics studied by and acted upon by the Coalition."

"ASACP is honored to have this opportunity to utilize its data to the benefit of NCMEC, Law Enforcement, and the FCACP," ASACP CEO Joan Irvine said.

"Of course none of this would be possible without the financial support of the industry," Irvine added. "Support of ASACP allows us to continue these vital efforts to protect children."

The continued assistance provided to FCACP by the adult industry-supported ASACP demonstrates the industry's proactive steps toward legitimacy and "doing the right thing" — but this work can only continue with your support. In an era of dwindling budgets and cost-cutting measures, it's more important than ever to take a stand for the future of your business by supporting this dedicated organization that works on behalf of your interests in Washington and beyond. Visit the ASACP website today and make a donation of any size; or become a member; or upgrade your current membership level — now is not the time to sit on the sidelines and let others carry the load for you… Thanks for your support of ASACP — and thanks to the Association for supporting FCACP and the adult entertainment industry. Working together, we can all make a difference for the children and ourselves.