Troy Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 This is really annoying me, so I figured I'd post here and see if anyone else has experienced this, or feels similarly. I'm curious how many of you had ever noticed non-pornographic expired domains being redirected to porn by your registrar(s)? We may be more sensitive than this to others, as a company that caters heavily to churches, but I would think many would be troubled by this practice. The first case happened with Enom. We had a customer with a ministry to underprivileged children. One of their domain names was iskids.org. They forgot to renew it, and Enom redirected it to a page full of porn links, along with a large photo of the bottom half of a kneeling woman, from the rear, in nothing but a G string. Needless to say, they were dismayed when their website users started asking why their domain was redirecting to porn. We lost them as a customer. Enom was useless in the matter. They claimed their automated expired domain parking uses domain keywords to determine the type of content to which to redirect. They wouldn't answer the question of what about iskids.org could possibly be considered pornographic. The only possible english keywords I can think of are kid, kids, skid or skids. What in there is pornographic? At best, taking kid or kids as a keyword to redirect to porn is outrageous and pedophilic. The second happened just a few days ago to barefootmemories.net - a scrapbooking site. This time the registrar was DirectI. Again, I asked them what is overtly pornographic about the domain name, and again they were unable to answer. Neither registrar is willing to enable a setting on your account to never redirect expired domains to porn. It seems to me that they should 1) not redirect to porn unless the domain name is overtly pornographic, or 2) at a minimum, if they can't do #1, give you the option to never redirect expired domains in your account to pornography. Any comments? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handsonwebhosting Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 I've actually never seen any of our expired domains point to a porn site. They usually point to some "expired domain" page or something similiar. I think eNom had like a picture of a girl with school books or something - I can't remember. Definitly the redirection of domains to porn is not a good practice. I've not seen it done before myself, and find it appaling that they would do something like that. Redirect to their own page/site, or to a page with google adwords releated to the domain name may be something to do if they're interested in making money from advertising, but to display porn links and/or graphics is not cool. Never seen it before. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 Hi Troy, Thats well out of order! As you know we use the orderbox platform, LB/DI or RC whatever you want to call them, tried this with one of our domains, they really weren't ready for the response I gave them (we have to go through LB as support)! Needless to say, the redirection of one of our domains was to a text holding page, with sex toys listed :0, now it goes to a simple holding page with text links and a reminder to the domain holder to renew their domain. I must admit, making a few extra sheckles from a holding page for an expired domain is one thing, showing porn is totally different! One of the reasons for the holding page is to gauge if the domain is worth registerring to "catch it", bearing in mind DI is behind snapnames remember. Chris This is really annoying me, so I figured I'd post here and see if anyone else has experienced this, or feels similarly. I'm curious how many of you had ever noticed non-pornographic expired domains being redirected to porn by your registrar(s)? We may be more sensitive than this to others, as a company that caters heavily to churches, but I would think many would be troubled by this practice. The first case happened with Enom. We had a customer with a ministry to underprivileged children. One of their domain names was iskids.org. They forgot to renew it, and Enom redirected it to a page full of porn links, along with a large photo of the bottom half of a kneeling woman, from the rear, in nothing but a G string. Needless to say, they were dismayed when their website users started asking why their domain was redirecting to porn. We lost them as a customer. Enom was useless in the matter. They claimed their automated expired domain parking uses domain keywords to determine the type of content to which to redirect. They wouldn't answer the question of what about iskids.org could possibly be considered pornographic. The only possible english keywords I can think of are kid, kids, skid or skids. What in there is pornographic? At best, taking kid or kids as a keyword to redirect to porn is outrageous and pedophilic. The second happened just a few days ago to barefootmemories.net - a scrapbooking site. This time the registrar was DirectI. Again, I asked them what is overtly pornographic about the domain name, and again they were unable to answer. Neither registrar is willing to enable a setting on your account to never redirect expired domains to porn. It seems to me that they should 1) not redirect to porn unless the domain name is overtly pornographic, or 2) at a minimum, if they can't do #1, give you the option to never redirect expired domains in your account to pornography. Any comments? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Posted August 14, 2008 Author Share Posted August 14, 2008 Yes, normally Enom redirects to the page with a girl holding books, along with some supposedly relevant links. However, in this case, here's what Enom pointed to (screenshot of the page): http://www.mediaserve.com/washingtonag/iskids.jpg Enom's response was: Hello, Thank you for contacting Technical Support. I certainly understand your concern with this. I find it hard to believe that our system would pick up a keyword in the domain name that would trigger that parking page. The issue is that we have no control over this. I must say that this seems to be an isolated incident as I have NEVER seen this before. I cannot guarantee that it won't happen again, but generally speaking our system will only put that page up if there is foul language or sexual reference in the domain itself. I certainly do apologize for any trouble or inconvenience this may have caused you. and then later in the same ticket, after I asked for justification for the action: Thank you for contacting Technical Support. Unfortunately with our terms and conditions, we can point domains anywhere once they are expired. I agree that this page is certainly not correct one for this domain, but there is nothing that we can do. I ended up filing an online complaint to the Washington (state) Attorney General's office today, as I truly believe this is outrageous, especially Enom's unwillingness to provide a means to prevent it in the future. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Posted August 14, 2008 Author Share Posted August 14, 2008 Hi Troy, Needless to say, the redirection of one of our domains was to a text holding page, with sex toys listed :0, now it goes to a simple holding page with text links and a reminder to the domain holder to renew their domain. Chris, Thanks for the info! I'm a bit confused though - are you saying you were able to verify this practice with a non-pornographic domain name? And then, are you saying they changed it? The DirectI/Resellerclub/whatever tech I spoke with via chat said there was nothing he could do about it, and wouldn't do anything to try to find out why it had happened. If they have a way of preventing this from happening, I'd like to know. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
othellotech Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 2 things to remember #1 if the domain has expired *YOU DONT OWN IT* so have no say in what it is used for - this is the way to explain it to your clients who are banging up-and-down, and a good opportunity to sell them a nice juicy 10 year extension #2 in most cases the registry or registrar is using an external partner (at least for the keyword analysis) so they have little say in the content - personally i disgaree with the redirection and would rather see just a page saying "expired, contact your registrar" but many are working with tight-to-non-existant profit margins, so the $$$ they collect from the PPC sh!te for people dumb enough to let a actively wanted domain expire keeps them in business ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben-iNetFx Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 I'm with Rob on that one - if your domain has expired, what right to you have to complain as to where it points? It's no longer your property.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chickendippers Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 Chris, I'd be interested to hear what you said to support to get this issue fixed. We host a number of church websites and want to be pre-emptive on this. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handsonwebhosting Posted August 14, 2008 Share Posted August 14, 2008 True the domain is their control and I agree with that, but there should be some limitations on that shouldn't there? At least from my own business dealings with our customers if they fail to pay for a domain that we registered on their behalf, we DO point it to a page with advertisements etc, but none of those offers are to porn sites. Maybe we're missing out on a chunk of change by not getting involved in the porn links As for no control, that's a cop-out answer. There's ALWAYS control - someone is controling it. It may not be the solution that we want, but there's always some sort of control. If they cant resolve it, the person responsible must. Upselling the domain is great, and done all the time, and warning notices ARE sent to users when domains are about to expire (usually 60-30 days in advance). Users then have another 30 days Grace period (SOMETIMES) to get their domain back. Some registrars sell the domain within a day or two depending how much they can get for the domain etc. Once expired the domain IS NOT yours and they are free to do whatever they want, but surely some ethics would be taken into consideration. I'll be interested to hear what you find out on this issue. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted August 15, 2008 Share Posted August 15, 2008 Chris, Thanks for the info! I'm a bit confused though - are you saying you were able to verify this practice with a non-pornographic domain name? And then, are you saying they changed it? The DirectI/Resellerclub/whatever tech I spoke with via chat said there was nothing he could do about it, and wouldn't do anything to try to find out why it had happened. If they have a way of preventing this from happening, I'd like to know. Firstly, on the jpeg above, nice butt Well remember RC is getting money for displaying textual ads, and in answer, as we are the registrar we dont have to accept the policies of RC. Ours are different. What happened on the domain in our control, was it expired the nameservers changed (logicboxes trick) and textual links were displayed, they certainly werent targeted links as if they were, god only knows what they were trying to target... Regards, Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted August 15, 2008 Share Posted August 15, 2008 2 things to remember #1 if the domain has expired *YOU DONT OWN IT* so have no say in what it is used for - this is the way to explain it to your clients who are banging up-and-down, and a good opportunity to sell them a nice juicy 10 year extension . Well said OthelloTech, basically at the end of the day, if you let it expire, thats up to you, you only have yourself to blame. I certainly dont accept enoms excuse, as at the very least they could change the DNS servers, or simply remove the DNS. Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted August 15, 2008 Share Posted August 15, 2008 Chris,I'd be interested to hear what you said to support to get this issue fixed. We host a number of church websites and want to be pre-emptive on this. Hi ChickenDippers, Its registrar specific, RC though are the registrar, so they make their own terms up. Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apollo1 Posted December 4, 2008 Share Posted December 4, 2008 (edited) Sorry to revive this old thread, but I have a related question. I have a customer whose domain just expired yesterday. The domain is registered with ResellerClub. When I visit their web site, RC redirects it to the temporary page which indicates the domain is now expired. There is a link on this page which says "Click here to renew your domain". The link points to my RC customer control panel. The issue is, I don't provide this login info to my customers, nor do they even know about this control panel. The only control panel they are aware of is WHMCS client area. Is there any way in RC (same goes for eNom) to set where this URL points to? I would like to modify it if possible to simply point to our WHMCS login, so they can go there to renew their domain. Edited December 4, 2008 by apollo1 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Well you can set up a custom control panel., goto Settings >> Control Panel >> URL, setup Control Panel URLs at the bottom. BUT, I do not know if RC takes the URL from here or not, but worth a try. It will disable your customer ability to administer using RC, but then as you say, you arent too worried about that. Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simplybe Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 I had the same problem with enom and this was also a kids related domain too. I find it disturbing that the porn links seem to be triggered by domains aimed at children. I actually renewed the domain myself as I found it totally unacceptable to direct a domain previously used by children to porn links. enoms reply "Hello, Sorry for the long delay, I will forward the issue so that this doesn't happen again. Thank you for your patinence in this matter." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFSG Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 I had the same problem with enom and this was also a kids related domain too. I find it disturbing that the porn links seem to be triggered by domains aimed at children. I actually renewed the domain myself as I found it totally unacceptable to direct a domain previously used by children to porn links. enoms reply "Hello, Sorry for the long delay, I will forward the issue so that this doesn't happen again. Thank you for your patinence in this matter." It seems like the problem lies within the word - 'kids' 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apollo1 Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Well you can set up a custom control panel., goto Settings >> Control Panel >> URL, setup Control Panel URLs at the bottom. BUT, I do not know if RC takes the URL from here or not, but worth a try. It will disable your customer ability to administer using RC, but then as you say, you arent too worried about that. Chris Thanks Chris, I'll give that a try. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netearth Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Thanks Chris, I'll give that a try. Hi Apollo1, Can you tell the forum if that works, others may wish to know it Thanks, Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.