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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.
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!"
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.
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.
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
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
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!
Looks like it was hijacked (or at least not reregistered by macslash), this is from the WHOIS @ whois.networksolutions.com
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
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.MYDOMAIN.COM
NS2.MYDOMAIN.COM
NS3.MYDOMAIN.COM
NS4.MYDOMAIN.COM
Register a domain name at www.dotster.com
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
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."
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.
So how does M$ keeps their domain names? I would think the evil empire would be a prime target for these domain snipers? Something must happen that allows M$ to maintain the reistration so what are they doing that macslash wasn't?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Somehow I don't think that the domain just "expired". When you run a web board like macslash you don't accidentaly let your domain name expire and not register it again.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
atypically useless
Pardon me but, what the hell does that mean?
Secondly, regardless fo whether the content is shit, the board is popular in it's own user base and has been arround for a while. You don't just forget something like that.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Actually, Microsoft had passport.com "stolen" a few years back after it expired. The person did just do it for a joke, and gave it back.
I'm not sure what the circumstances were in this case, but my registrar Gandi reserves domain names for 30 days after expiration. After that, they are available for someone else to register.
I'm not sure how Microsoft does it now, but I imagine they have recurring billing for a number of years on their domains now, or paid many years in advance.
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
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."
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
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.
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.
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
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.
yup, check out macslash.org
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
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