Today, the expression yellow pages is used globally in both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. Donnelley created the first official Yellow Pages directory. The name and concept of "yellow pages" came about in 1883, when a printer in Cheyenne, Wyoming, US working on a regular telephone directory, ran out of white paper and used yellow paper instead. However, in the United States, neither the name nor the logo was registered as trademarks by AT&T, and they are freely used by several publishers. In many countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere, "Yellow Pages" (or any applicable local translations), as well as the "Walking Fingers" logo first introduced in the 1970s by the Bell System-era AT&T, are registered trademarks, though the owner varies from country to country, usually being held by the main national telephone company (or a subsidiary or spinoff thereof). The traditional term "yellow pages" is now also applied to online directories of businesses. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings. The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. Various (United States), Yell (United Kingdom) Bell Canada (Canada), Directories Philippines Corporation (Philippines) Various (United States), Yell (United Kingdom) Yellow Pages Group (Canada), Directories Philippines Corporation (Philippines) "It's getting pretty boring.2004 Yellow Pages for Auckland, New Zealand "I have to manually go through every submission," he said. Every day, he faces the same routine of sifting through stacks of email sent from porn sites and photo galleries seeking a link on The Hun's Yellow Pages.
He says his day-to-day job of posting porn links has gotten to be a bit monotonous. In some ways, that's not a bad thing for Terwee. Overall, it's been a pretty litigious couple of years. Terwee said he also recently purchased the sound-alike domain names and to prevent rivals from attempting a copycat site. A few rivals have tried to trick search engines set to automatically troll Web page content by posting the words The Hun in black letters on a black background on their sites or in meta-tags. He recently took action against a competitor who he claims set up a site with identical links to those found on The Hun's Yellow Pages.
But the porn industry seems to hold a certain appeal for hijackers and other domain name scammers.Īs for Terwee, his five-year tenure as an Internet entrepreneur has been full of scam attempts and legal disputes with would-be rivals. When such cases do occur, it's usually because domain name owners didn't opt for more sophisticated security systems offered by NSI to protect domain name holders, spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy said. Network Solutions officials said there's no evidence that the incidence of domain hijackings is on the rise - although the service was stung in a high-profile incident last week. Network Solutions officials did not confirm whether Terwee's site had been hijacked.Īlthough Workman says he's been getting more calls lately about hijacking cases, it's tough to say how common such scams are. Once scammers get Network Solutions - which runs the database of sites - to do the transfer, they try to sell the domain to a third party.īecause con artists use phony identities, they're hard to track down in the impostor-heavy online world. "With domains, because some of them are so valuable, there are some unscrupulous individuals out there who believe they can make a fast buck by submitting a false domain transfer document," Workman said. Terwee's lawyer, Steve Workman, says few cases like The Hun's ever make it to court.
First, however, he'd have to track down the person who pulled the scam. Scam artists galore are seeing the value in his site's domain names, and more than once Terwee has come close to losing the title to his own site. At the very least, it's gotten him enough to finalize plans for a million-dollar, custom-built home.īut lately, hanging on to the source of all that prosperity has turned into a small nightmare.
What's more, Terwee, a computer programmer by training, says they've built it up without buying advertising or hiring outside staff.Īlthough Terwee won't say exactly how much he makes by selling ads on his pared-down homepage of links to free porn sites, he admits he's "not doing badly." Advertisers pay up to US$900 a month for a spot on his site. According to traffic statistics firm WebSideStory, The Hun draws about 800,000 unique visitors in a typical day. Over the last five years, The Hun's Yellow Pages - the site he runs with his wife out of their Netherlands home - has grown into one of the most visited sites on the Internet. By most measures, Patrick Terwee's tenure in the sordid world of Internet pornography has been a splendid success.