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Hey Chris, Even I had the same reaction when I first started with this company, Why would you need all these sites...With the exact same content. They have different plans and ideas or probably misguided by some SEO guy! Regarding the vast number of links from the forum, None of the backlink tools like OSE, Ahrefs is showing those links apart from GWT. I'm thinking to Disavow that forum's domain. Hopefully, that should work!! Thank for the response.