(tracking link)

Bulker software should carry warning labels against operation while under the influence. Moron does a spam run but forgets to replace what appears to be a "specimen" URL ("replaceme dot com") with his own. As a result, he points zillions of people to an apparently unrelated domain. Domain owner has to get up a page repudiating the spam.

-- rick

LOL!

I've had a few of those

Cheers!

replaceme dot com = 72.9.226.50 = anonymity dot com (Anonymity Test, Link Anonymizer, OpenID Anonymity) - maybe it's just an ultra-clever marketing ploy. To paraphrase Clarke's Law, "A sufficiently subtle ploy may be indistinguishable from a laughable botch-up." Or, shades of the wheelbarrow smuggler. Just thinking out loud ... Of course I don't see the 'repudiation page', given only the bare bones of the story.

Ah yes, I see the redirection now:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:42:17 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.8
Vary: Host
Location: http://unixtime.info/replaceme.html

Searching for replaceme dot com results in links to anonymity dot com but clicking an actual replaceme dot com link (thanks for the tracker) follows the redirection. An even cleverer ploy than I imagined!

My impression, unencumbered by facts, is that the owner of replaceme dot com is white hat -- in his disclaimer page he actually advises people NOT to click on spam links. The redirect comes about simply because he redirected from the domain name to the location of the disclaimer page on the unixtime.info server, maybe this was more convenient.

-- rick

Yep, my impression is 'white hat' too. I think he is probably using the unixtime.info server (instead of anonymity dot com), in part, so people wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the whole thing was actually a ploy. My "An even cleverer ploy than I imagined! " comment was entirely facetious. The efficiency, as a ploy, with the disclaimer on a different server, would obviously be very low indeed so the probability (of a ploy) recedes towards zero.

I've gotta stop being facetious. There could be all sorts of 'white hat' reasons why the owner of replaceme dot com chose to register that domain, ranging from pure altruism (if he knew spamkits include it as a default) through to pure business (if he knew, for instance, mainstream/legitimate web utilities use it as a default) - in the latter case the spam could be very inconveniencing for him because the redirect to unixtime.info will divert more appropriate business from the intended target.

Just a little unsure of domains using logical (but non-standard) 'default' domains. F'rinstance .invalid is a reserved tld like .example and .test. While example.com, example.net, etc. are also reserved domains, invalid.com is not (only the .invalid tld). Of course many people mistakenly use invalid.com addresses for newsgroup posts, etc. (instead of user[at]domain.invalid, whatever) and I'm not at all sure what to make of the home page there at invalid.com .

Hi,

I have a lot of domains and whichever are not used I point to anonymity.com rather than letting the traffic go to waste. 3 or 4 of those domains are in the vein of the one in question. They get some traffic and (presumably) PR from various links people make as examples in forums and the like, but it's been a hassle too as evidenced.

I was notified of the issue by my registrar as well as normal people e-mailing me through the anonymity.com e-mail (from the contact page) wishing to 'unsubscribe', at which time I created the warning page and pointed the domain there instead. I put it on unixtime.info because that site haven't got any ads anywhere, and I also don't want this traffic confusing my stats on sites that get real traffic.

As mentioned, hassle..My hosting acount got pulled for approx. 14 hours because they didn't investigate the complaint, which would have lead them to the page explaining the issue. They restored it when I got them to read and understand, but it's not a good feeling to have such drastic measure taken on you over the actions of some stranger. My registrar was pretty belligerent as well but having a notice before they did anything enabled me to explain this to them.

In any case, no white hat trickery. Just what I suppose must be an inevitability when owning this type of domain. Point taken and I will try to sell them to someone able to handle this.

Thanks indeed for dropping by and clearing that up, ReplaceMe. Good to hear from you and much appreciated.

Somewhat on topic, an e-mail conversation regarding this affair.









Wonder if he'll respond.

Thanks for that, I love a good laugh at some moron's expense in the morning Makes you wonder how people like that have managed to survive this long, doesn't it?

Oh, dear, you caught the guy shopping for 'meat additives' so he felt compelled to lash out.

I get these from time to time. Once, someone threatened to put the police on to me because I posted and analyzed stock spams on my website -- he figured that I had planted one of my pages two years in advance just to short a stock that he just bought. Thing is, he freely owned that pennystocks are risky, but he still felt compelled to pass the buck to someone else for his loss.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing what the late Paul Harvey used to call "The REST of the story"

-- rick

I sometimes think that many people regard the web as a form of television -- that is, a one way push of content from anonymous corporate forces. When they do get evidence that there are real individual people behind the sites they slag away at, it puts them off balance.

To this we must add the desensitizing or depersonalizing effects of internet communication, which I think have been studied to the extent of having earned a name (which I forget at the moment). People will say things to strangers via e-mail etc. that they would never dream of uttering in public.

-- rick

True, but the point is the real and virtual worlds probably *do* cross over/'learn' from each other as well - and that seems an asymmetric process. Which is to say revolting things are more often uttered in public by young and old alike without any trace of reticence, head stomping and similar 'exuberance' in brawls has become routine ... etc. {sigh} all the effort I made to 'clean up my act' after formative years years spent in rough company - I needn't have bothered . Not that I was ever a head stomper, honest.

Contrary indications (no, no, not about the head-stomping):But "This study investigated the relationship of traditional social behavior to social communication via the Internet in a completely wired campus" which is arguably not the 'real world'. Still, thesis - antithesis.

Because of netiquette, the virtual world is more polite than offline. Even though people can, and do express themselves in ways they wouldn't in person. The difference is that if you call someone names in person, he is likely to use violence to retaliate. Online, you can just ignore it. You can't force anyone online to do what they don't want to do whereas offline, it is possible to force someone to do something they don't want to do. That's why so many people want laws online. Actually, I hope maybe the netiquette will cross over to offline where people realize that it is possible to get along with different people without forcing them to be the same.

MIss Betsy

I think I may have posted this before, but I once heard that the internet was a place where the men were men, the women were men, and the children were F.B.I. agents.

-- rick

I must have missed it then.