Reaction from a reader from India - 26 Nov 2003

The server that hosts the 4 websites of yours also hosts the french dating website. Now since you share the same server, you share the same IP address. Think of it as many people (different websites) sharing the same building number (server's IP address) in an apartment complex (server). Thus, any one visiting the apartment complex will have to specifically ask for the person's name, to get to meet him.

If someone comes to your server and says www.anneku.com, the server will show your page. However, if someone does not mention the name (just mentions the bulding number), or in this case, mentions a wrong/unknown name (hello.anneku.com), the server will show the page of the most important person in the apartment complex, i.e. the primary domain: the French dating site.

To fix this, just tell the sysadmin at your webhost to "create a redirect for the wildcard *.anneku.com to www.anneku.com so that it doesnt show the primary virtual host instead".

Bon Journal

Who stole my subdomains?

While searching for the control panel of my personal web site today, I stumbled upon a very curious phenomenon.

If you type anything in front of .anneku.com -- such as http://hello.anneku.com or even http://_.anneku.com you get to the web site of a French dating agency called Date Express.

I tried this for bonjournal.com, pianoguitar.net, and justharp.co.uk --- all four web sites hosted by my current host and lo and behold! They all get to this French dating website: http://fr.date-xpress.com/

How could this have happened? I got onto a lengthy discussion with another web host. It would be a serious breach of security if anybody could just take your subdomain and redirect it elsewhere.

The curious thing was that it's only these four domains and not my other sites.

Who controls the subdomains? I do. But I have never used these subdomains.

Who could have done this?

Was it a suggestion - a hint - that I should start a matchmaking website, for all those visitors that have stumbled upon my sites?

24 November 2003 Monday

Webhosts beware:

Forthcoming article by Anne Ku: Getting information and advice about webhosting, January 2003