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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?"
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.
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.
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.
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=
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.
I think they got it from here:
http://www.whois.sc/
I use that for quite a while now...
The whole world isn't out to screw you over.
That's yet to be proven.
How does the submitter expect the geeks to care when we have a shell to get faster results?
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.
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.
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
Well, I'm out to screw him over, and so is everyone I just asked. Actually, we're all pretty amazed, we all thought we came up with the idea on our own. Small world, huh?
Say... do you have any magazine subscription cards? We ran out.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
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.
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.
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
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?
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...)
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Silly boy. Everybody in Minneapolis knows that they're just a suburb of Chicago.
Basically this allows Google to spider my site, but when robots like msnbot decide to ignore this, reading and parsing robots.txt at each line, they'll follow block_crawler.pl, which is a script that appends their IP, date, time, etc. to .htaccess, with a "Deny from" rule.
For excessive abuses, I just block their /24 at the firewall.
Incidentally, they are ignoring robots.txt because they want to beat google at indexing "More(tm)" content, and be the "premiere" search engine out there. A year of "accidentally" crawling more content than they should, and their search engine will appear to have a LOT more pages that google does. You can bet a press release advertising this fact will appear soon after.
I have another little trap for the harvesters, called "Can-o-Raid", which I've been using for about 4 years now. You can read more about it on my Perlmonks writeup over here. Being able to pollute the search engines with +/- 7 million fake email addresses per-night is pretty nice.. and I can slow them down by adding a sleep(45) to each page reload. They can't get out, once they get in.
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