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Network Solutions Overhauls Whois Results
Robert Accettura writes "Network Solutions has updated its whois interface, giving it an interesting new twist. On top of regular info provided, it shows data that appears to be from Alexa, including a screenshot of the homepage (though not terribly recent), as well as looks up your IP, and displays lots of information on it. It even shows the server type, if it supports SSL, DMOZ, Yahoo listing, traffic ranking, and lock status. This comes right after they announced rapid DNS updates. Perhaps they are trying to win over the geeks before they turn on sitefinder?"
will they win with the pathfinder...
Unless I'm missing something here, the Virtual Boy was made by Nintendo.
I ran a WHOIS query on my domain, kravlor.com, and it was placed in Chicago, IL, as opposed to Minneapolis, MN! Apparently I'm an e-commerce site, whatever that is, too!
Perhaps they are trying to win over the geeks before they turn on sitefinder?
Maybe. However, my bet is on friendlifying (hey, I just coined a word!) the service for something far more sinister. This wreaks of targetting manadrones with all sorts of feelgood updates that don't serve that much purpose for real geeks...
Maybe I'm paranoid, but when you're dealing with a group like this, you can't look at it with too much suspicion.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
You mean to tell me that these guys are SPYING on me??? =P
Lagito ergo expectabo
this is /., when we bash MS facts are irelevant, same as when MS bash linux, so we are all even
Whois.sc displays screenshot of website homepage at least a couple of months ago.
Im stupid. It IS Nintendo, but my fingers obviously were taken over... BUT BY WHO?!?!?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I assume you're referring to Sitefinder?
Yes, bad ideas happen. However, actively destroying expected behavior of the entire internet is just plain sinister. The only thing they can fall back on is that "technically" they didn't break anything in the sense that wildcards are legitimate.
Mistakes happen, sure. Sitefinder, however, was just malicious profiteering and status abuse.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
It seems to thank that I also have an e-commerce site
Microsoft announced today that they are launching a competing Whois database, Microsoft Owner.
Microsoft Owner features an innovative, user-friendly interface that leverages off of the Microsoft setup Wizards.
To use:
click on icon for Microsoft Owner.
Next->Next->Please enter the domain name
Let's see. How about... www.google.com
Next->Next->Reboot
login->Next->done
www.google.com is Google!
Unknown host pong.
has a traffic ranking of 1, whatever that means.
So what did they exaclt achieved? I mean, besides getting that Ip blacklisted by most of the world?
The info appears against my Network Solutions domains, but not my Tucows ones.
And in some respects the Tucows approach is better. A Network Solutions query shows all my details directly. Tucows requires a query to input a grahpics based password so it is harder to harvest the info.
They are cracking down on bogus domain registration information for the sole purpose of being able to make money on their new service which allows you to keep your registration information private.
They didn't give a crap until they realized it would affect their profits.
Tried testing it out through a proxy that strips the referrer and user-agent fields (no tin-foil hat here ;-) ). Just kept giving me 302 redirects back to the same front page
Just what we need - a fussy site.
I'm a bit disappointed that you cannot perform a whois lookup on .us domains.
.us people? Were they denied access to the data?
Doesn't Verisign like the
Register.com lets me do a lookup. Perplexing.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
a bit of innovation and everything...
the picture detail on the whois record is cute, although bandwidth wasting, still cute...
...but my comment for the last NSI/Verisign story still stands.
They're going in the right direction, but I still don't trust them nor will I ever use them for domain services.
The poster got this a bit mixed up. The DNS updates are a VeriSign issue...Network Solutions, though once a VeriSign company is a completely seperate company now.
Apparently, you've found the MS wizard for posting to Slashdot.
I think they got it from here:
http://www.whois.sc/
I use that for quite a while now...
It must be illegal or something for Slashdot editors to actually be happy about something. Here they add a few nice features to WHOIS and you're off spouting, "I bet they're just kissing up to the geeks." I mean, seriously, get some counseling or something. The whole world isn't out to screw you over.
Ask Microsoft about Virtual Boy.
I could as MS about Virtual Boy, or I could ask Nintendo...
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Right, but the grandparent poster probably just couldn't come up with any Miscrosoft failures, being so rare and all....
I mean, I'm still using the MS Bob desktop, aren't you?
--
Kirby
If only he'd said "ask Redmond about Virtual Boy"...
How does the submitter expect the geeks to care when we have a shell to get faster results?
When I read the description in the original post, that was the first thing that came to my mind.
They either bought whois.sc, or got in some sort of agreement with them.
However, when I went to the whois page listed in the original post at http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois, this info is not available. What gives?
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
# jwhois netsol.como ns.com] ..]
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.networksolutions.com]
[Querying whois.networksolutions.com]
[whois.networksoluti
NOTICE AND TERMS OF USE: You are not authorized to access or query our WHOIS
database through the use of high-volume, automated, electronic processes. The
[.. disclaimer snipped, but its still there
Network Solutions reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.
Registrant:
Network Solutions, LLC. (NETSOL-DOM)
13200 Woodland Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20171
US
Domain Name: NETSOL.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC (37151550P) customerservice@networksolutions.com
13200 Woodland Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675
Record expires on 02-Feb-2012.
Record created on 31-Jan-1993.
Database last updated on 12-Jul-2004 22:23:07 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NETSOL.COM 216.168.229.228
NS3.NETSOL.COM 216.168.229.229
NS2.NETSOL.COM 216.168.229.229
#
http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/result s.jhtml;jsessionid=GBG2FGJRK0RFYCWLEAMBFEY?whoisto ken=8&_requestid=358746
Changing the sessionid does nothing.
Changing the requestid does nothing.
Changing the whois token cycles through different sites somehow. Anybody got a clue what the format of the URL is?
Tech-Recipes.com: Solaris/Linux/Windows Hints = Money
So Alexa is an Amazon company and they are making money by taking screenshots of copyrighted material?
Maybe everyone who has screenshots of their website in Alexa should file a DMCA complaint Amazon. Seems fair to me since Amazon loves bogus patents.
That is the fourth or fifth time I've seen your damn comment about your own friggin' site! Why don't you just write, "I'm pathetic, please visit my site." It would be easier and a lot more honest.
You have to click on "underlying Whois data" to get the registrar info. At least you still can.
Registrars are going to be annoyed about this.
wats odd is how your site never loads on my browser because my hosts file defines it as 127.0.0.1. Maybe you should think more deeply about the repercussions of your actions.
Speaking of spying, I noticed that they finally give you an option of hiding your personal information. My ex-girlfriend always used to say they should just include links to mapquest so that crazy psychos could just print off the map directons, drive to her house and kill her. Bad enough that she's actually gotten CALLS from creepy people.
So at least that's one step in the right direction for Network solutions, even if they're going the wrong direction in so many other instances.
What I want to know is why they did away with having the results be returned as an image. Now my email is availible on that site in text format, leaving me suseptible to spam bots that search sites for email addresses.
I get soooooo much spam because I'm required to have a valid e-mail address in my whois information. Tough tatties, I guess.
I think that this improvement is because Network Solutions charges the most for domain registration and they are trying to provide a better product in order to justify the cost. The added information isn't a major step forward for domain owners, but it does help make Network Solutions seem like a more serious provider.
my blog
"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." - Lennon, McCartney
Holy Fuck. You know, I try to make my info private since I just saw the link and noticed that they want $27 to make my info private. Man that's about as wrong as it gets. I think it's time for another registrar for me.
One thing that interests me is that it says my company's web server is Apache. We switched to IIS6 like two months ago.
-Lucas
They'll impress me when they PUT SOME FUCKING SECURITY ON THE WHOIS SEARCH. Stupid ass companies like Network Solutions are the reason at least 50% of my spam is sent to a DOMAIN REGISTRATION ONLY email address.
Would it be terribly difficult to implement a system like whois.sc, where it shows images of your email address instead of text? I think not. I could probably do it and I'm a pretty green PHP coder.
it's a long time since i've been to the netsol site and my initial reaction after trying this new web whois search is that they are a disgrace.
my search on my own domain returned links to "snap up" the domain when it expires, "make an offer" on the domain, register the same domain with other extensions (forcing me to now consider buying the other domains if i want to stop that happening).
and as if those tactics aren't low enough, they also have sitefinder.
oh and did i mention my email is printed without any spam protection on the results page?
the referrer is to keep out bots. Any normally paranoid site does this with forms.
They used to require you pass a captcha to get the information about the domain. Oh wait, that's 9 bucks a year and only works for domains registered through netsol now.
That was nice of them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Does anyone know what the Traffic Rank means? My company's site is listed as a 2, slashdot is a 1. Lowest I can find is a 4. Lots of sites have a Not Available rank.
Let me save you all the troulbe. This shmata-oozing putz has spammed this discussion over a dozen times to promote his shithole website. Do NOT give him the satisfaction of boosting his visitor stats.
If you spam your shitty website here again, I have well over 200 megabits of distributed hosts around the internet ready to flood your IRC network and/or website at my command. If it happens, then don't be surprised.
I am sending a warning to your IRC host to let them know of your spamming activities and that if they can't get a lid on you guys, I will take this matter into my own hands. Thanks.
who noticed slashdot's traffic ranking was #1?
It says "IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)"
Totally useless answer, but technically correct. I should expect no less from Verisign. heh.
Stll looks the same to me:
.ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist persons in determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the PIR registry database. The data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry for informational purposes only, and PIR does not guarantee its accuracy.
localhost:~$ whois slashdot.org
NOTICE: Access to
This service is intended only for query-based access. You agree that you will us
(snip)
I don't know about this being intended to court the geeks, as any actual geeks would be rather unlikely to use a web interface to do a whois query.
Read, L
fd If you spam your shitty website here again, I have well over 200 megabits of distributed hosts around the internet ready to flood your IRC network and/or website at my command. If it happens, then don't be surprised.
I am sending a warning to your IRC host to let them know of your spamming activities and that if they can't get a lid on you guys, I will take this matter into my own hands. Thanks.
If you spam your shitty website here again, I have well over 200 megabits of distributed hosts around the internet ready to flood your IRC network and/or website at my command. If it happens, then don't be surprised.
I am sending a warning to your IRC host to let them know of your spamming activities and that if they can't get a lid on you guys, I will take this matter into my own hands. Thanks.0000009
It got the Phoenyx' location right (unsurprisingly, since our IP is right where you'd expect it to be).
But yeah, we're "e-commerce: yes" too, which is fightin' words, as we're a free site, where "free" doesn't mean "call it free then shove ads at you."
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
What I want to know is why they did away with having the results be returned as an image.
Under certain conditions involving government contracts, American companies have to comply with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires the company's web site to be accessible to people with disabilities. Try retyping a web address from an image if you're blind.
I checked out my domain, which I'm scared to give the name of now and at the top of the page is the following
.net, .org etc ...
Certified Offer Service - Make an offer on this domain
Backorder - Get this name when it becomes available
Similar Names - See suggested alternatives for
this domain
In addition a sidebar has all the other
tld
Excuse me? I don't mind getting legitimate offers to purchased this domain but they seem to be offering services to encourage squatters to either steal it (when the registration expires)
or to grab similar sounding names so they can profit off typos? Whose brilliant idea was this?
User-Agent: msnbot
Disallow: /
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Would it be terribly difficult to implement a system like whois.sc, where it shows images of your email address instead of text?
Yes, in the United States, at least. Are you familiar with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?
They used to require you pass a captcha to get the information about the domain
And then one of the following probably happened: either somebody with less than perfect sight sued NSI under some sort of Americans with Disabilities Act, or Hewlett-Packard "gently reminded" NSI of U.S. Patent 6,195,698. (Read More...)
<redundant>
Sitefinder turn on!
</redundant>
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
Is there an alphabetic listing of registered domains? If not, why not?
Tucows requires a query to input a grahpics based password so it is harder to harvest the info.
So what are blind people supposed to do? The TUCOWS Whois interface doesn't seem to provide a way to download the digits as an audio file in Ogg Vorbis format.
I checked several domains I take care of and only one was vaguely correct. If that's the best they can do...
the referer can easily be faked and a simple additional option to recursive crawlers like wget to get around ignorantly admined sites
That's ok, they placed me in Houston TX (I'm in Oshawa, ON... not even the right country) and they gave the wrong IP address... methinks there is something screwy with their system.
They haven't won this geek over.
Sorry boys, try again when you've hired someone competent. (or fixed your DNS problems.)
Correct.
But it had all the hallmarks of shoddy Microsoft R&D, so although designed and manufactured by Nintendo, you could make the argument for Microsoft being its spiritual father, so to speak.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"Unless I'm missing something here, the Virtual Boy was made by Nintendo."
Hold your horses, the patent hasn't cleared yet.
"Derp de derp."
...and a second search for the same domain turned up "US(UNITED STATES)-WASHINGTON-BELLINGHAM"
Not even consistant wrong answers.
Yes, it was. Someone high in the ranks was fired for it too. To date, it is the only system from Nintendo I can think of that just bombed.
http://www.google.com/search?q=spyware+alexa&ie=UT F-8&hl=en&meta=
My spyware blocker software goes nuts with alexa stuff. So, now I know I pick it up when I look at Amazon without blocking the scripts. Is there no respect anywhere?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The real point of this is to get people to go to the site, realize all the crap they are starting to publicly offer to spammers about you, and force everyone to purchase private registration.
And how will your images show up on my xterm window?
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
Actually, I wanted to define "ugly basement-dwelling gnetoo nerd who knows all about 'kernal instal' and 'emegre world'".
maybe one of their dbs is down or something, but when I try to get a hit on haam.us or state.tx.us I get this: We are unable to process your request at this time. Please try again later. I almost thought they'd been slashdotted.
I am curious as to how they can get the screenshot of any website. How is that done?
it's about f%rking time. There have been plenty of tools which have been developed which permit a global retrieval for nearly all other lookups except for...gosh, NetSol. Who finally held their nuts in a vise and told them to fix it or else? Could it be they've given themselves enough bad press someone said, "Stop, or we're going to whack you for real this time (again)?"
It has been time for a new registrar for a while now if $$$ is an issue. Usually, when monopoly power is lost, the former monopolist is forced to compete. NSI chose not to. Several competitors sprung up, many with better services and extremely lower prices. NSI neither lowered their prices nor increased their service level. Other than the name, there is no reason at all to stay with them unless you like paying 3x-10x the price for less service.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Now the real question, is what is Veryslime up to?
That's the only similar disaster I can think of on Sega's side. Nothing is more humiliating than having to sell your major icon(Sonic) to the opposing system.
microsft.com
Name Server: NS4.MSFT.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 23-jun-2004
Creation Date: 02-may-1991
Expiration Date: 03-may-2014
who else has may 3rd 2014 marked on their calenders. I hope to buy microsoft.com for 6.95
Just to save themselves the minor pain of providing a decent user-interface for their domain registration.
Really. Despite the fact that they're 3 or 4 times more expensive than some of their competitors, a lot of people would still stay with them if trying to do business with them wasn't like trying to give an enema to a herd of feral cheetahs.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I figured I'd try the new web interface out. Entered in our main domain, and well...
I noticed that the one weak link for the company I'm contracting to, that's on my list to fix (one of the reasons I'm here now), namely the domain name stuff...was actually in the MIDDLE of being compromised. They seem to have just kidnapped our corporate domain, and were on their way to our actual product site. Not all our domains are with NSI (thank god), but the fact I lucked out and checked it by fluke is damn scary.
Looking at their results for a whois on my domain, I found something rather stupid. I clicked on the DMOZ results (hey! I didn't know someone put me in there...) and discovered that they convert DMOZ urls to all capitals. Wonderful. This is highly unlikely to work on a majority of websites... case matters in URLs!
A domain I sold 6 weeks ago is still listed to me.
to my account which shows in the whois database has jumped in response to this. What they've done will cost everbody $$$ but they must think they are immune from any court-administered judgement. Heck, look at ol' M$$ and what they get away with. I tell you the corporations are really runnin things here.
The VeriSign/NetSol merger was big news, but apparently the spinoff wasn't. I didn't even know about it until it was mentioned in the rapid DNS update thread.
... Pivotal Private Equity will acquire the firm from VeriSign Inc. ... VeriSign will retain a minority interest in Network Solutions and retain its registry business."
Nov. 26, 2003: Pivotal Private Equity Acquires Network Solutions. "Pivotal Private Equity announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire control of Network Solutions, the world's largest domain name registrar, for $100 million.
The IP address from which you have visited the Network Solutions Registrar WHOIS database is contained within a list of IP addresses that may have failed to abide by Network Solutions' WHOIS policy. Failure to abide by this policy can adversely impact our systems and servers, preventing the processing of other WHOIS requests. To see the Network Solutions WHOIS Policy, click on or copy and paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index. jhtml
If you feel that you have received this message in error, please contact us at:
whoisquery@networksolutions.com
If you're concerned about privacy, instead of using your home address, get a P.O. Box. And instead of listing your home telephone, list your office/work telephone. Or just make up the phone numbers. The only things that matter are a valid address and valid e-mail address.
Yes, I practice what I preach: I've been using the above methods for 5 years now without a hitch.
For what it's worth, not Versign anymore -- they sold off Network Solutions last year or so.
It still seems to be wrong. It says my web server is in San Fransisco, CA. when doing a whois lookup on the IP address gives the correct location for the netblock (Houston, TX).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
At least the rest of the info appears to be correct; right down to the registrar name (GoDaddy).
You can't take the sky from me!
Sigh...
.com/.net. They are revamping their whois interface. This has nothing to do with Verisign, and hence nothing to do with Verisigns sitefinder in any way.
.com/.net. They are doing a change to DNS updates, which is a good thing, no need to wait for days for changes to propagate any more. Whether this is an evil plot to enable their sitefinder service again - I'll leave that up to the tinfoil hat audience to discuss.
NetSol is a *Registrar* for
Verisign is the *Registry* for
To sum up: They are two separate entities. NetSol is not owned by Verisign any more.
Why are all the /. ads for good companies these days (FSF, RackSpace, Google, Linux.com, ThinkGeek). What happened to all the M$ ads we loved to hate?
This is sooo wrong that the /. guys are now getting more ethical funding. Next, we might start to respect them. Actually, no, let's not take this too far ;-).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
wats odd, is that it doesn't have an image of our site, but alexa does.
Wish it showed our google results instead of yahoo, though
Don't attribute to malice what could be easily explained by stupidity.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Now, why do you find this strange ?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
another marketing ploy indeed by NS
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Heh, just like it seems to think mine is runnign Apache 1.. which hasn't been true for some 1 1/2 years at least...
Silly boy. Everybody in Minneapolis knows that they're just a suburb of Chicago.
I saw this story, went to my command line and typed "whois [my NetSol Domain]" and it returned the same results as usual. Is there something different?
.
I am using the best whois client, available from http://www.linux.it/~md/software
Anyway, time to quit out of lynx and get to work.
I love that they put up a spy pop under when you hit search. http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/popexit/pops tealth.html
Titled "NetworkSolutions Consumer Insight"
God I don't like that company.
A Google search reveals that you are one of approximately two people in the world who uses the word manadrones.
Perhaps it's time to stop making up your own words and join the rest of us who use words that people can understand (language is not useful when only one person in a discussion knows what it means), or maybe you were referring to continuous low dull humming sounds caused by a supernatural force, but that just seems confusing.
Is it someone's last name? "Hello, Mr. Manadrones!" for example.
Yea, I'm running Apache 1 (but I'm not, I'm running IIS 6.0 on Windows 2003). Nailed my position though. I'm Secure and E-Commerce. Huh?
Oh well.
My reality check bounced.
:hs:
Did anybody else notice that whois.sc is using IE (or IE libraries) to take the screenshots? I took a look at my flight school's web site, and the center pane was misaligned; this is due to a CSS bug in IE that I've not yet worked around. I also took a look at my homepage, and it rendered one of the transparent PNGs on a grey background (with the normally-invisible black text clearly visible--it should say "If you can read this text, click 'about this site' to find out why!" "About This Site" is a page that talks about IE bugs.). It should be noted that I'm looking at whois.sc with Moz, so the rendering issue isn't here; also, the screenshot image is a JPEG.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
I just renewed a domain on godaddy today. It was $9 for private registration. I didn't bother using it, though, because I didn't want to have to think about possible ownership issues.
Network Solutions can be found at netsol.com and nsi.com. Right?
Here's a trick: Type simply "nsi" into Firefox. Usually it will resolve incomplete domains for you but it looks like the folks at Mozilla didn't want to give www.nsi.com any extra hits! (worked on 0.9 for OS X)
I don't see a correlation between Network Solutions' Traffic Ranking and Alexa Ranks.
Slashdot is ranked 1,270 on Alexa and has a Traffic Rank of 1 on whois. That makes sense.
gizmobytes.com has a Traffic Rank of 2. That's pretty good for a site which is ranked 968,786 on Alexa!
sizzly.com is ranked 854,289 on Alexa, but has a Traffic Ranking of 5 -- quite a bit lower than gizmobytes.com, if a lower number is better.
-
*
But at the same time, the new, ad-heavy Verisign Whois page is up.* WELCOME to the VeriSign Global Registry Service Whois Server.
*
* Sorry, the Whois database is currently down.
*
* Please wait a while and try again. Thanks
*