[mdlug] If someone's going to steal your domain...

[Ingles, Raymond]

...they might as well be stupid.

 I was careless and didn't renew my free account with dyndns.com in time, and
on Saturday someone else swooped in and stole my domain, "ingles.homeunix.org",
out from under me. A bit of digging turned up an IP address served by a company
in the U.K.

 In the meantime, I registered "ingles.homeunix.NET" and set things up again.
Updated a few places that point to my homepage so they weren't hitting the
wrong place.

 Now, I'd been wondering if this was an honest mistake, someone grabbing a
domain listed as available... but then yesterday they put up a copy of my home
page there. (Except it has a funky 'meta' tag.) Just the main page, none of the
links lead anywhere. That company in the U.K.? "Real International Business
Corp.", and a bit of Googling indicates that they are involved in spamming and
link farming. I'd send them a DMCA takedown notice except they're in Europe.

 Fortunately, they aren't too bright. Since my webserver is an ancient Mac, I'd
reduced the load by hosting images at the free web space my ISP gives me. And
their copy of my web page is still loading an image from there. So I tweaked
a few things and, well, now there's a great big warning on the spammer's page
that it's not the real deal.

 Ah, well, I've gotten an education out of the experience. And I've set a
reminder in my Palm Pilot to renew the account regularly...

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                             (313) 227-2317

 "I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by
 men who are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am
 sure that either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and
 perhaps in some respects, both.

 I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable
 that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with
 my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me."
                        - Abraham Lincoln
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