Yeah, unfortunately that happened. Our friends and and very active members from both Private Islands for Sale and Tropical Islands Community just suffered this attack. The site is currently off https://islandsbelizesale.com/ but it is being fixed. Amin Bensalem, the owner just confirmed me that their site got hacked:
We had some hacker attack on our websites
Fixing it now
Hopefully it won’t affect us
What is worth of mentioning that it happened before on Facebook, in our Private Islands for Sale Group that I found their posts frequently marked under ,,potentially unwanted content” or spam, despite there is nothing wrong at all. They regularly contribute and follow rules. They offer islands and beachfronts that are under public listings mostly, so anyone can offer those as well, there is no reason to be marked as spam. That means that someone reported them wrongly on purpose many times most likely.
And now coincidentally, their site got hacked. I think that it is black business, that must be dirty competition here. My wife Sonja (who is coowner of this blog) and SEO specialist and Economist Marketing Manager also agrees on that theory considering all of this.
Alfredo Ayme, the owner of Private Islands for Sale, Sonja and I feel sorry for them and hope this will be resolved quickly. We will continue to show support, we must be united in these dark times regarding sabotage and dirty tactics from evil people around. I am in constant communication with everyone regarding this matter. It matters of us too as anyone can be the next, these people are out of control.
I even asked Google’s Gemini, paid version if AI that I have, and it also notices that it looks like dirty competitor’s work as possibility:
High-stakes niche markets like private island real estate carry intense competition, and coordinated foul play is definitely a real factor. While competitor sabotage is entirely plausible, evaluating whether this was targeted or opportunistic comes down to two distinct angles:
Why It Could Be Targeted Foul Play
Coordinated Reporting on Meta: Facebook’s automated moderation algorithms rely heavily on report velocity. Competitors frequently weaponize mass reporting (often using botnets or multiple accounts) to trigger automatic spam flags, suppressing organic listing reach without human review.
SEO & Lead Poaching: In ultra-luxury niches where a single transaction yields massive commissions, knocking a competitor’s site offline or injecting sneaky redirects to siphon off high-net-worth inquiries is a known tactic in black-hat competitive sabotage.
Negative SEO Injection: Some targeted attacks inject spam keywords (pharma, gambling) into the target’s database specifically to trigger Google search penalties and de-index ranking landing pages.
Why It Might Be Automated Background NoiseIndiscriminate Botnets: Over 90% of web attacks on small-to-medium CMS sites (like WordPress) are non-targeted, automated scripts scanning thousands of IP addresses per hour for known plugin vulnerabilities, outdated themes, or weak admin credentials.
Algorithmic Meta Flags: Facebook’s spam filters notoriously over-moderate external links in real estate groups—especially those featuring high-frequency link sharing, repetitive copy, or URL redirects—even without competitor intervention.Immediate Recovery Advice for the Owner
Pull and Analyze Server Logs: Look at the exact IP ranges and access patterns right before the breach to see if the entry was a wide automated script or a deliberate, manual intrusion.
Scan the Database for Backdoors: Automated cleanup tools often miss hidden PHP web shells or rogue admin accounts created inside the database.
Audit Lead Capture Forms: Ensure inquiry and contact forms are routing directly to the real owner’s inbox and not silently BCC’ing an external address.
Implement Web Application Firewalls (WAF): Putting Cloudflare or a similar reverse proxy in front of the domain blocks known scraping bots and geographic IP ranges associated with malicious scans.
