Slashdot Mirror
MacSlash Domain Stolen
MacSlash's Robert Daeley writes in to tell us that the domain name for MacSlash, the Mac news site, is incorrectly pointing to a generic "Dotster" page, either by accident or by malicious domain theft or squatting. They have registered macslash.net and hope to be back up again soon, and have as yet been unable to get word from "Dotster" regarding how this all happened.
https://secure.registerapi.com/help/csupport.php Why don't you all go off an ask them what they did with the domain? I'm sure they'd enjoy the email...
Registrant:
Vicente Peiro Crespo
Chiva , 23 , 27
Valencia, Valencia 46018
ES
Registrar: Dotster (http://www.dotster.com)
Domain Name: MACSLASH.COM
Created on: 28-MAY-02
Expires on: 28-MAY-03
Last Updated on: 28-MAY-02
www.macslash/com will never resolve. Try www.macslash.com
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
As of right now macslash.com is 63.238.196.105
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
on att broadband (mchsi).
Not sure if a name machine is messed up somewhere or what, but I resolve just fine from my machine.
I live in a giant bucket.
Google Cache
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
I don't know if it's just some of you people, if Dotster fixed the problem already, or what...but macslash.com points to macslash.com.
We still have not heard from Dotster at this point (23:10 PDT may 29), however some folks have reported being able to get in. If you are able to, please post in the Domain Troubles story so we know you got there.
For more information and updates, please email us at macslash@earthlink.net or call Ben Stanfield, Executive Editor, 270-881-0680. Thanks to everyone who has contacted us already. And thanks to Pudge for posting the story.
We are hoping to have this issue resolved ASAP. We apologize for the inconvenience.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
let me get this straight...a domain isn't pointed corectly due to a misconfigured router and it's news...?
.com belongs to Apple!!!!
You don't know that it's been stolen! Talk about chicken litte....gripes...
Next we'll be greeted with shots of used pampers that belong to the domain holder's toddler....
Pay for this, we must?
News!!!! iPod
Im sure we can get together a mob of angry macslash users right? i mean mac users are always refered to as zealots and a cult, well what's a cult without a militant arm?
there just aint no justice like mob justice.
--aiee
Sounds like someone missed the expiration notice...
Domain Name: MACSLASH.COM
Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois
Name Server: NS1.DOTSTERINC.COM
Name Server: NS2.DOTSTERINC.COM
Updated Date: 28-may-2002
I've been suffering from the shakes since As The Apple Turns (http://www.appleturns.com) went off the air last month and now MacSlash, too! Excuse me while I hide under the covers from the baby Steve Jobs that's crawling on my ceiling. Wait maybe if I go to Apple's Hot News page and keep hitting reload I can get a fix...
The domain is pointing to the right number, there is no place at the internet, remember?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Actually I thought it was a funny about macslash.com being owned by apple.slashdot.org.... at least the content says so....
So I quickly re-registered it with joker.com to make sure I kept it.
I then found out I had never had scandalsheet.net, only scandalsheet.org!
Ah well, now I have both!
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I thought domain name stealing/squatting had pretty much ended with google.
Oh well, sadly it appears that Dotster has enough server power to avoid a massive slashdotting.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
63.238.196.105 macslash.com.
63.238.196.105 www.macslash.com.
Sorry, but http://63.238.196.105/ won't work because it's vhosted and needs a request for macslash.com.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If you previously owned Macslash.org please email me at: webmaster@edgeofheaven.com
sounds antagonistic to me
This
Judging from the registration date of macslash.com by its new "owner", it appears the original macslash.com registration may have expired, allowing this guy to jump in and register it. There are some services available that let people monitor domain names for expiry and automatically register them as soon as they become available. (NSI/Verisign pushes snapnames.com, there are probably many others.) So before everyone jumps the gun, consider that the domain name may have expired and was automatically registered by this guy - legimately. Hey, if Microsoft can forget to renew their domain name, anyone can. =)
OTOH, if this was indeed the result of some malicious act, I hate to play the "told you so" card, but this is the very reason why registrars are pushing people to use more secure methods than the traditional email challenge that was first used. Email "From:" headers are easily forged these days, so you should always opt for the better (and less convenient) methods of protecting your precious domain names.
As of 10:15 am Thursday morning from inside UMich, www.macslash.com is still a dotster default page. Plain old macslash.com, however, gets me to their site.
-----
Apple hardware still too expensive for you? How about a raffle ticket?
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I've posted this to Metafilter, where domain hijackings have been a frequent topic of discussion (see discussions re succaland.com, smug.com and hoopla.com, where some insight into the subject of domain hijacking might be gained, perhaps).
Still got MacSlash at home this morning, but I've been getting Dotster instead at work since yesterday.
I'm going to have to forget to renew my domain name so I can get slashdotted too!
because your site is a waste of space and time.
Forgetting to renew your domain name != hijacking.
You snooze you lose.
As of 0952 PDT Thursday, there is still no word from Dotster. It seemed as if some folks were able to get through (including me) last night and post, but it is now offline again from where I am: no Dotster page, no MacSlash, no nothin'. A whois via networksolutions.com still brings up that Valencia hombre. Anybody seeing anything?
I will post again to this thread when we have more info.
Thanks again to everyone who has gotten in touch with us, and to the other Mac sites for posting info.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I've been following this story since yesterday afternoon on my fly-by-night Mac blog, obzorg.org.
If you're getting the Dotster 'coming soon' page when you try to reach the MacSlash site, check out these updates including AcaBen's public statements on the subject.
I'm using mozilla rc3 on linux.
The dotster holding page creates two new windows, then immediately hides them. In the brief interval before they disappear, I noticed an amazon.com url in one.
The windows disappear from the workspace, but leave placeholders in the KDE panel which don't disappear until I kill the browser.
So I don't know for sure what dotster is up to, but it looks like they may be trying to artificially inflate their clickthrough revenue from amazon.com.
- harv
- Open your Preferences panel.
- Expand the tree for "Advanced" and click on "Scripts & Windows".
- Deselect the ability of Javascript to:
- Open unrequested windows
- Move or resize existing windows
- Raise or lower windows
That should get rid of all the most annoying features of JavaScript without killing the useful or "pretty" website enhancements.If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The domain expired on May 28th From the verisign registry and was grabbed by Dotster's Namewinner software. The domain was NOT transferred.
Do you inspect a roller coaster everytime you ride it?
expired != hijacked.
"I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
According to George DeCarlo at Dotster, "Actually the name was deleted by the Verisign Registry and became openly available. We have a site and technology developed at NameWinner.com that allows customers to register expiring domain names the instant they expire. The only way customers can register names is if the name is deleted by the registry."
dotster's mail server is blacklisted by mac.com which is where the renewal notices were sent. so anyone with a mac.com email address rejects all mail from dotster. sucks to be blacklisted.
Do you inspect a roller coaster everytime you ride it?
1601 PDT, Thursday. Ben Stanfield, who is driving somewhere between Kentucky and Washington D.C., just received a call from a V.P. at Dotster who said that his people have been receiving A LOT of emails from you guys. He is personally looking into the problem and has assured us that he will do everything in his power to get this problem corrected. If it ends up being something that Dotster cannot assist us with we have already received an offer for Pro-Bono work from a lawyer who works with domain disputes all of the time. If worst comes to worst we'll be meeting with ICANN soon.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, macslash.net should be propagating even as we speak, so hopefully by tomorrow things will be back to (relative) normalcy. If not, I will continue to post updates in this thread. (Knock on wood laminate desk.)
Thanks much to everyone for their assistance, emails, and well-wishes.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
ever read macslash? it's a peice of shit. this is atypically useless behaviour by the editors and I'm glad tey've been squatted. good riddnce
It appears that the thieves have shown themselves. If you type in "http://macslash.com," you hit a series of forwarding pages that bounce you as follows:
(And, as far as I can tell, that's it. Lynx.trace logs are not easy to read!)
In the end, you are redirected to an outfit called Creative Computers, which appears to run websites called MacMall and PCMall. The WHOIS entry makes reference to a technical/administrative contact named Simon Abuyounes, whose direct line is (310) 225-2800, ext. 5651. His fax is (310) 630-3462.
They are located at 2555 West 190th Street in Torrance, California (90504). You can reach them at (310) 354-5600, but why not use one of their toll-free numbers?
Their sales number is (800) 222-2808; their government sales number is (800) 323-2704; their education sales number is (800) 328-2793; and their technical support numbers are (800) 760-0300 and (800) 727-7579. Only the first number is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week; the others have certain times they're open. For international customers, the line to call evidently is (01) 310-225-2600.
E-mail address include macmallsales@macmall.com, customerservice@macmall.com, mactech@macmall.com, and webmaster@macmall.com. Other valid e-mail addresses from their feedback form include sales@macmall.com, maccorpsales@macmall.com, and mmtech@macmall.com.
How is this offtopic? The link was broken, now it is fixed. Obviously it was on-topic enough for them to have fixed the link.
www.macslash.com now gets redirected to MacMall!!
Is this some attempt to redirect blame, or is MacMall really this slimy?
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
check out this
www.macslash.com is pointing to macmall.com now. Is someone trying to pull a Joe-job on MacMall?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not ignorance, just poor typing, numbnuts. And for Spelling Nazis you missed all the other obvious traps I left for you.
Mac Slash should die. Its "user base" are mostly anachronistic, self-inflated whiners anyway.
this situation is getting stranger and stranger. and ain't i the lucky one to have acaben's cell phone number ;)
grace
p.l.u.r.
The fact that the advertising is for Mac retailers means that whoever did this (Vicente Peiro Crespo?) did it with malicious intent! This was no mistake - I bet they are getting tens of thousdands of hits each day this goes on and making money off of our interest in the scandal. MacMall and Amazon should be notified about this so they don't pay these bastards.
Sound waves should be free!
As of Friday at 10:56 am EDT, I can get to macslash using macslash.org but not macslash.net. But none of the links work.
ScienceSeeker.org
Hey I just tried www.macslash.com and it is now redirecting to www.macmall.com. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? Do they think this is going to get them more business or is someone just trying to ruin them by pissing off half the people that buy lots of mac hardware online? I e-mailed them asking about it, but have not yet recieved a reply. In the interim, I certainly will not be making or recommending to others purchases from them.
Yes, that's right. Dotster looks like they were contracted by MacMall to get the domain once it expired. Legal, but not ethical.
I advise everyone to send them an e-mail or feedback note expressing disgust at their action, as well as an outright MacMall boycott (not that they were that great a comapny anyway...)
OK, two pieces of business.
.org has already (thanks again to Charles Ruggerio for hooking us up), we are going ahead with macslash.org for now. We will be posting a story on the site later today breaking down the whole situation.
macslash.net is not propagating properly, and since
Secondly, a Mac/ user (samiam) has already posted a great explanation of the apparent redirection to MacMall, so I won't repeat the story.
Thanks much!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
There sure are a lot of assumptions and finger pointing going on in this board without one solid fact.
First, people are saying this domain was hijacked, now that Dotster was 'contracted' to 'unethically' register the expired name.
Pardon me, but whats unethical about registering an expired name?
I'm betting that plenty of people here would applaud this situation if the domain 'hijacked' were a different commercial site.. say, ohhh.. Micro$oft?
Don't be stupid and start bombarding macmall with tons of calls and e-mails. They seem to have *nothing* to do with this - somebody is trying to take advantage of them as well as the users of macslash - they've managed to grab a popular domain name and they're redirecting it to a site that pays them for (most likely) banner ad referrals.
Write a polite e-mail informing MacMall of the problems that the company (http://www.merc-net.com et al) is causing. I'm sure MacMall will be very unhappy to have their name linked to this.
You can also write up some nice reviews about how unreliable, underhanded, and all around bad this merc-net place is and post them to the web - make sure google can hit them. That way if their potential customers bother to do any research on the web they'll find some, ahem, interesting information.
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
I sent an email to Mac Mall about this. Here's their reply:
Thank you for your email. We are looking into this issue. MacMall is not responsible for this and we are working with those who are redirecting the MacSlash.com URL to our site. We are also working on blocking this from going to our site.
Webmaster MacMall
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and proclaim their innocence (until I hear otherwise).
Now (may 30 1:18PDT) when you go to macslash.com it's a page with
visit macslash.org.
when you click on the link it takes you to a site with a small message which then finally redirects you to macslash.net
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
MacMinute has reported this:
May 31 - 15:20 ETÊÊMacSlash, a Mac news and discussion site, is accessible again at macslash.org after the site lost the macslash.com domain earlier this week. The site apparently failed to receive its domain renewal notices as a result of mac.com email filters that automatically designated the messages as spam and deleted them.
The page consists of
"visit www.macslash.org"
So they know what they did.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
remember passport.com?
, 00 . tml
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33337
Going directly to the site now goes to a link to http://www.macslash.org/ but any page that's not the main page brings up an ad for free cell phones.
An what really sucks is that if you click a story title on the macslash slashbox, it brings up that free cell phone ad.
What seems to have happened is the owners of macslash.com let their registration expire (the Dotster e-mail warning them of this was filtered out as spam on their mac.com e-mail account apparently), and Vicente Peiro Crespo of Valencia, Spain registered and paid for it legally at expiry. According to what he's said on the macslash.org thread about this, he does this with expired domains and redirects them through Commission Junction for a little extra money from ad revenue. Not exactly the most honorable thing for a moonlighting hobby, but perfectly legal.
However, he has said that when owners ask for their domains back (eg. when the domain is still in use) he gives it to them sans profit; and further he has stopped advertising on macslash.com as soon as he found out the domain was still near & dear to people's hearts and he's stopped advertising. He's also put up a link from macslash.com to macslash.org as of this posting, as you can see. This dosen't sound like the work of a beligerent opportunist nor is this a "hijacking" as the title of this thread implies. His first post on Macslash about it mentioned that he was willing to return the domain if the former owner contacted him. But now Vincente says that he, Dotster, and Commission Junction have recieved so many flames about this that they've cut off his account and he's no longer making any money off of anything.
Somehow this seems like a simple mistake (on both the part of Vincenete and Macslash's owners for letting it expire) that could have been easily corrected but now exacerbated by a lot of flamers. So stop sending nasty e-mails to everyone on the planet about this and maybe Vincente will give the domain back if he's still inclined. Otherwise MacSlash will have to get used to permanently being at MacSlash.org
I'm a bit new to the Slashdot moderation system, but I'm a bit disturbed that I've been labeled a troll thanks to some anonymous (and error-prone, evidently) moderator.
Certainly, the understanding NOW is that it is not MacMall's fault. However, this was not clear at the outset, and at the time of this post, I was attempting to provide information by which people could contact the alleged perpetrators without having to do the research themselves.
I am not certain enough of Slashdot's moderation system to know whether this complaint is valid or not, or whether the situation can (or should) be rectified, or indeed, whether this is even that big of a deal.
But frankly, I don't appreciate being called a troll. I've been on the Internet or BBSs since I was a young teenager, almost 20 years ago, and I have not engaged in trollish behavior.
Nor, frankly, did I do so here. Someone was a little trigger-happy with the moderation points, with all due respect.
It's sad that the initial message in this thread was considered off-topic, when, in fact, it corrected a mistake in the Slashdot story and provided users with the correct link. I'm about to cry.
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!