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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.
The threat was to disembowel him if he was a squatter, but as it turns out he's not (as I though to be the case). So no disemboweling is necessary. What he does deserve is a big HUZZHA for doing the right thing.
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?
Someone is redirecting people to MacMall through an affiliate link at Commission Junction. I seriously doubt that MacMall is behind this activity. The person who is in control of macslash.com is just redirecting people there because they pay a sales commission and it is a logical affiliate link to push on macslash readers.
I'm sure that the people at Commission Junction and MacMall would like to know that one of their "affiliates" is using a redirect to send them traffic, which probably violates their terms of service. I would really recommend against harassing these people since they didn't do anything other than offer a commission on sales of mac hardware and software that is being abused by the person who now has macslash.com.