I have found that most of the common mis-spellings of our domain name have been registered with the Internic by a company named Americaoffline.
Yup. They've been busy registering dropped-letter variants of many folks. All the zones I've looked at are merely wildcard A records, not purposeful hosts. I was sorely disappointed that http://www.americaoffline.com/ contains no references to malicous nor humourous stuff. Personally, I was hoping for large-scale lampooning. Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains? Joe
On the same thread, or possibly not, there is also a company that is trying to make a go at redirection of typos (typo.net). For an example, try www.yaho.com Barry Barry L James | Mikrotec Internet Services, Inc (AS3801) Director R & D | 1001 Winchester Rd bjames@mis.net | Lexington KY 40505 http://www.mis.net/ | 606/266.5925 800/875.5095 Member AAAI, IEEE # 40277528 --- Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. -- Winston Churchill
Or maybe these are also the "adult site operators"? At a conference I tried accessing ESPN web site :) by typing in the URL - typed sportszone.espnet.com by mistake (instead of espnet.sportszone.com) - and was surprised by the "Click if you are over 18" message... have heard from others that several other mis-spellings also lead to similar sites. Any trademark protection ("webmarks?") available to the folks who run these popular sites? -amit :> I have found that most of the common mis-spellings of our domain name :> have been registered with the Internic by a company named Americaoffline. :Yup. They've been busy registering dropped-letter variants of many :folks. All the zones I've looked at are merely wildcard A records, not :purposeful hosts. I was sorely disappointed that :http://www.americaoffline.com/ contains no references to malicous nor :humourous stuff. Personally, I was hoping for large-scale lampooning. :Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything :of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains?
On Mon, May 11, 1998 at 11:28:11AM -0700, Amit Gupta wrote:
Any trademark protection ("webmarks?") available to the folks who run these popular sites?
There isn't any reason why you couldn't register a domain name as a trademark. Whether a purposeful misspelling like that would support a dilution or false light action is another matter entirely. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com
On Mon, May 11, 1998, Joe Provo - Network Architect <jprovo@ma.ultranet.com> quoth:
Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains?
Heey! I feel special! bash-2.00$ host mindsring.com mindsring.com A 205.231.48.243 bash-2.00$ host mindpring.com mindpring.com A 205.231.48.243 bash-2.00$ host mindsping.com mindsping.com A 205.231.48.243 Someone out there has money to blow. Expect to see forthcoming spam about the vast moneymaking potential of misspelled donaims. I suppose obfuscation is one of the sincerer forms of flattery... -- John Butler, Network Engineer, Mindspring Enterprises Operations Dept web toys at http://www.mindspring.com/~fez mailto:fez@mindspring.net ***************** Do not confuse "intelligentsia" and "intelligence."
On Mon, May 11, 1998, Joe Provo - Network Architect <jprovo@ma.ultranet.com> quoth:
Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains?
Heey! I feel special!
bash-2.00$ host mindsring.com mindsring.com A 205.231.48.243 bash-2.00$ host mindpring.com mindpring.com A 205.231.48.243 bash-2.00$ host mindsping.com mindsping.com A 205.231.48.243
Think you are special? Wonder how The B&N (can't even spell it now after looking at the variants they registered) book sellers must feel. Try: WHOIS SERVER NS42656-HST To see some of what these folks have registered. Sadly that will only return 256 entries. The Internic claims to have not given out the entire DNS database since March. Anyone know otherwise, or how to quickly get WHOIS to return more than 256 entries on a WHOIS SERVER request?
On 05/11/98, barton@cent.net wrote:
Sadly that will only return 256 entries. The Internic claims to have not given out the entire DNS database since March. Anyone know otherwise, or how to quickly get WHOIS to return more than 256 entries on a WHOIS SERVER request?
If you have a password you can get it (they give 'em out to people who ask.) -- J.D. Falk <jdfalk@vix.com> Vixie Enterprises http://www.vix.com/
On Mon, 11 May 1998, J.D. Falk wrote: # If you have a password you can get it (they give 'em out to # people who ask.) Who do I ask? ;) -jwb _____ ___ ___ |_ _| _ ) __| James W. Brinkerhoff <security@tbe.net, jwb@tbe.net> | | | _ \ _| TBE Network Security Administrator |_| |___/___| TBE Internet Services - 973.835.9696 <sales@tbe.net> Key fingerprint = 0E DA 27 39 91 1E B6 29 A4 D2 5E E5 FD 3B F4 3C "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
On 05/11/98, "J. W. Brinkerhoff" <jwb@g0d.tbe.net> wrote:
On Mon, 11 May 1998, J.D. Falk wrote:
# If you have a password you can get it (they give 'em out to # people who ask.)
Who do I ask? ;)
ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/README (BTW, this is in the archives.) -- J.D. Falk <jdfalk@vix.com> Vixie Enterprises http://www.vix.com/
I have asked four times and never even gotten an answer J.D. Falk wrote:
On 05/11/98, barton@cent.net wrote:
Sadly that will only return 256 entries. The Internic claims to have not given out the entire DNS database since March. Anyone know otherwise, or how to quickly get WHOIS to return more than 256 entries on a WHOIS SERVER request?
If you have a password you can get it (they give 'em out to people who ask.)
-- J.D. Falk <jdfalk@vix.com> Vixie Enterprises http://www.vix.com/
On Mon, 11 May 1998, J.D. Falk wrote:
Sadly that will only return 256 entries. The Internic claims to have not given out the entire DNS database since March. Anyone know otherwise, or how to quickly get WHOIS to return more than 256 entries on a WHOIS SERVER request?
If you have a password you can get it (they give 'em out to people who ask.)
Only if they chose to believe you have a good enough reason for wanting them. I wanted them for what I thought was a totally legit purpose...we were preparing to renumber, and as part of the task of renumbering, I wanted to compile a list of all domains for which we're supposed to be authorative. I was told "that's not good enough...send us the DNS server info, we'll run the search and let you know how it turns out." I did so, and never heard back. The renumbering is now done...and I never did get to compile a list of all the domains we're lame for. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lewis <jlewis@fdt.net> | Not good enough for Internic :( | Network Administrator | ||||\ Florida Digital Turnpike | ______http://inorganic5.fdt.net/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key____
The renumbering is now done...and I never did get to compile a list of all the domains we're lame for.
we had a similar problem when we were switching off the machine formerly known as dns0.britain.eu.net, which seemed to have been a server for most of the UK's DNS at some time, as well as being a resolver for pretty much everyone. Nominet were helpful in providing a list of all domains which in theory it was supposed to be primary or secondary for, but it didn't help where where other delegations were made to it, such as .com and .org, and the .in-addr.arpa was a nightmare! What we did in the end was to use TCPDUMP with a big packet length, dumped it to a file, so that it showed the DNS transactions, and some judicious awk hackery allowed us to see what it was being asked for, what zone transfers worked and who was resolving off it. We managed to stop most of the resolving, and eventually turned off recursion to put an end to that! When the deadline was reached to turn it off, we'd gotten the number of zones down from many hundreds to perhaps a couple - just the ones where the TLD delegations were untraceable or hopelessly broken. Paul ---- P Mansfield, Senior SysAdmin PSINet, +44-1223-577577x2611/577611 fax:577600 *** If a grand piano had a rubout key, I'd be a concert pianist by now! ***
We went through the same thing with them. The instructions at rs.internic.net are incorrect (at last viewing) http://rs.internic.net/announcements/97/97003.html -> NSI bulletin 097-003 | Zone file access and ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/README say send an e-mail to hostmaster@internic.net. This is not correct. You must send an e-mail to zones@internic.net with the information requested in the bulletin. I told them about this error back in mid-February. Moreover, they weren't granting access to anyone for awhile (thanks for telling us); apparently, they weren't comfortable with some aspect of the access process. After a month or two of waiting, they granted me access. Meanwhile, I called them and got them to run a database dump of each of my NS hosts, and I used the dump to check for lame delegations. The database dump doesn't have the 256 host limit. It turns out that the database dump is actually more useful than the zone file access. It would be really nice if they'd 1) do away with the 256 host limit, and/or 2) provide an interface to the database that would allow you to check the data on your hosts. -C At 02:29 AM 5/13/98 -0400, you wrote: <SNIP>
Only if they chose to believe you have a good enough reason for wanting them. I wanted them for what I thought was a totally legit purpose...we were preparing to renumber, and as part of the task of renumbering, I wanted to compile a list of all domains for which we're supposed to be authorative. I was told "that's not good enough...send us the DNS server info, we'll run the search and let you know how it turns out." I did so, and never heard back.
The renumbering is now done...and I never did get to compile a list of all the domains we're lame for.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lewis <jlewis@fdt.net> | Not good enough for Internic :( | Network Administrator | ||||\ Florida Digital Turnpike | ______http://inorganic5.fdt.net/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key____
Here's this week's response from a request for zone file access sent to hostmaster@internic.net:
Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting Network Solutions, Inc., InterNIC Registration Services.
We cannot give you access to our database for all records, other than what is in our whois database, is confidential and not available to the public.
Best Regards, II Network Solutions, Inc.
--Brad Horak Systems Research Center Digital Equipment Corporation
On Wed, May 13, 1998 at 02:29:46AM -0400, Jon Lewis wrote:
Only if they chose to believe you have a good enough reason for wanting them. I wanted them for what I thought was a totally legit purpose...we were preparing to renumber, and as part of the task of renumbering, I wanted to compile a list of all domains for which we're supposed to be authorative. I was told "that's not good enough...send us the DNS server info, we'll run the search and let you know how it turns out." I did so, and never heard back.
The renumbering is now done...and I never did get to compile a list of all the domains we're lame for.
If that wasn't a good enough reason, then I submit that the person in administrative control of that process knows nothing whatever about the Internet, and should be relieved of that responsibility, if not their job, immediately. It casts serious doubt on NetSol's fitnes to operate a registry, as well, I think. Can you tell I'm not in a good mood right now? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com
Someone out there has money to blow. Expect to see forthcoming spam about the vast moneymaking potential of misspelled donaims.
actually, I like that, a purposely mispelled domain should be called a "dohname", emphasis on DOH. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | http://www.world.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
There has been at least one other company that I know of in the past couple of years that has done this, although the name slips my mind. Their purpose was to hit poorly spelling surfers with ad's when they typed "ayhoo.com" or "entcom.com" etc... accidently in their browser. Legitimate use of the domains, no matter how stupid :) -Ryan Jeffs On Mon, 11 May 1998, Joe Provo - Network Architect wrote:
I have found that most of the common mis-spellings of our domain name have been registered with the Internic by a company named Americaoffline.
Yup. They've been busy registering dropped-letter variants of many folks. All the zones I've looked at are merely wildcard A records, not purposeful hosts. I was sorely disappointed that http://www.americaoffline.com/ contains no references to malicous nor humourous stuff. Personally, I was hoping for large-scale lampooning.
Nothing at the real provider's home base, INSTANET.COM, reveals anything of interest. Some kook thinking he can auction off typo domains?
Joe
On 11 May 98 at 20:16, Ryan Jeffs wrote:
There has been at least one other company that I know of in the past couple of years that has done this, although the name slips my mind. Their purpose was to hit poorly spelling surfers with ad's when they typed "ayhoo.com" or "entcom.com" etc... accidently in their browser. Legitimate use of the domains, no matter how stupid :)
An illegitmate use of these types of domain is easily proven in cases such as one I dealt with a year or so ago. In a domain that was one character off from one that my company owned, DNS revealed that there was a record for every server hostname that was on my network (and they weren't all commonly-used hostnames, either). If anyone can think of some ethical and non-malicious reason to do this, I would be interested in hearing it. Mark Borchers InfiNet
On Monday 11 May, Ryan Jeffs <rjeffs@getnet.com> writes:
There has been at least one other company that I know of in the past couple of years that has done this, although the name slips my mind.
Try http://www.altavista.com/ altavista.digital.com now spots this referral (for folks that allow referrals through ..) and makes you page down to see the search page, putting up the 'bad referral' reminder. Dumb of them to miss that one .. Cheers, Andy!
There has been at least one other company that I know of in the past couple of years that has done this, although the name slips my mind.
One is Data Art Corp, http://www.dataart.net/about.htm . See my writeup at http://www.tbtf.com/archive/09-22-97.html#Tbdn . _______________________________________________ Keith Dawson dawson@world.std.com Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk.
participants (18)
-
Amit Gupta -
andyr＠wizzy.com -
Barry James -
Barry Shein -
barton＠cent.net -
Brad Horak -
Christopher Caldwell -
dawson＠world.std.com -
J. W. Brinkerhoff -
J.D. Falk -
Jay R. Ashworth -
Joe Provo - Network Architect -
John Butler -
Jon Lewis -
Mark Borchers -
Paul Mansfield -
Roy -
Ryan Jeffs