How to Get Away With Things on GeoCities

by Champ77

Why would anyone care about getting away with things at GeoCities?

Well, basically, GeoCities gives you two megs of space on their system to put up what you want, as long as it isn't "objectionable."  Funny thing, ya know.  They allow all sorts of crappy pages, but if you try to put up a page on "hacking" they will delete it as soon as they find it.  But, if you are smart, they will never find it.

How Pages Are Checked

Each "neighborhood" in GeoCities has a set group of Block Leaders (BLs) and Community Leaders (CLs).

CLs are GeoCitizens who fill out an application which is reviewed by a set of CLs for that neighborhood who are called the CL Review Team or something similar.  BLs usually just have to say they want to be a Block Leader to become one.  BLs "patrol" a certain block of their neighborhood, looking for content violations.  CLs do this and also participate on several "teams," but that has little bearing on most GeoCities users, so we will skip it.

At least once a month, the CLs and BLs are supposed to scan their block and report anything they find back to the real GeoCities employees with an alert form.  Since this form is open to all users, the turn-around time for alert can be quite a bit.

Common content violations reported to alert are: no link back to the GeoCities main page, hacking, pornography, and copyright infringement.  Once alert gets the report and reviews it, they will take some action, which ranges from warning the homesteader to deleting the account and page.

Getting Your Account

When you sign up for your account, tell them whatever you want!

The data is never really used again unless for some deranged reason you sign up for GeoPlus (a pay service which gives you more space on GeoCities).  The CLs and BLs you will deal with never have access to this information, it is accessible only to GeoCities employees, who most GeoCities users never encounter.  Be creative with the account information form!

This is your chance to have a page and put whatever you want on it without you having to worry about what could happen!  I would suggest signing up for a GeoCities email address and using that on your GeoCities home page.  Now before you pick your address, go to the Community Page of the neighborhood you are moving into.  Somewhere will be a human resources link.  Look for it and somewhere linked to that will be a chart of the BL and CL block assignments.  Try and find an address that is unpatrolled.

If all the blocks are being checked, find a new neighborhood or look for a block being patrolled by a new CL (CLs are listed in chronological order on most Community Resource pages).

Moving Into Your New Address

Once your account is activated, move in as soon as possible.  If you don't move in within a certain time frame, your account will be deleted.

Create a crappy page (it will fit right in at GeoCities) about something that fits in with the neighborhood you moved into.  Be sure your page description doesn't say something stupid like warez or hacking.  Make the page look legit.  Sign up for the GeoCities Banner Exchange and all that crap.

If a BL or CL emails you, be nice to them.  If there is some problem with your page, be happy and fix it.  If you fix things quickly and reply to their email quickly, they will be less likely to report you to alert.  It is standard procedure in most cases to email the user before going to alert if there is a content violation.

Setting Up The Real Page

If you actually read the GeoCities terms of agreement and all that legal crap, one of the things they tell you not to do is create pages not linked to any of your other pages.  You know why?  Because the pages are checked by ordinary users.  They have no way to peer into your directory and see if you have any content violations lurking around on pages they don't know the URL for.

So, just be careful who you tell about your real page on GeoCities and you should be able to put up whatever you want.  With a legit looking main page and an unlinked real page, you should be able to put up whatever you want on GeoCities and never have to worry about being caught and kicked off.

What To Do If You Get Caught

If GeoCities finds out somehow about your page and mails you about it, don't expect to be able to weasel your way out of it.

If the real GeoCities employees mail you, you can expect to fix the problem or be deleted.  I would suggest deleting all your files and disappearing from GeoCities then.  But, if you are lucky and a BL or CL sends you a message, be friendly.  Social engineering is very useful here.

BLs and CLs are normal, untrained people.  They are easily fooled.

In conclusion, GeoCities could be used as a tool, a place to have pages to spread knowledge and the power that comes with it.  I would love to see it used for more things than people talking about their pet dog or their favorite sailboat.  It's two megs of free space.  Now two megs might not sound like much, but that could hold quite a few texts.  And even if you don't have the space to put up all the texts you would like to, you can put up thousands of links.