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journal: think
News of the Weird: Alexa.com hacked? [UPDATED: Nope!]
Visitors to Alexa.com might have noticed something odd Tuesday night:
See that? No, not Deep Thought’s traffic ranking (We’re 377,191! We’re 377,191!); below that. “See other sites owned.” (View full screenshot)
Yes, I blurred out the URLs, due to their, ahem, inappropriate nature and I’m not in the mood to field complaints from angry mothers who found their little Johnny surfing pr0n sites after finding the URLs here.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone broke into Alexa’s servers, and instead of doing a drastic defacement of the site, stuck something in the sidebar bragging about their exploits. If anything, I must admire the hax0r’s appreciation for subtlety!
For what it’s worth, a quick look at Netcraft’s data on Alexa indicates the stie is running on Linux servers.
Newsworthy? Not really. News-of-the-weird-worthy? Definitely.
UPDATE: Reader Dan Ridley clears things up:
That’s supposed to show you other sites owned by the owner of the same URL you’re currently dealing with. So if you look up a9.com, you see that they own opensearch.org; or if you look up apple.com, you see that they own mac.com.
A whois lookup for dtgeeks.com says it’s owned by the RegisterNow Whois Protection Service, so Alexa is lumping you in with others who don’t want it to be known what sites they’re running.
That’s what happens when the term “owned” is used in geek circles for something completely different!
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| Nick | comments | views |
thinkback
That’s supposed to show you other sites owned by the owner of the same URL you’re currently dealing with. So if you look up a9.com, you see that they own opensearch.org; or if you look up apple.com, you see that they own mac.com.
A whois lookup for dtgeeks.com says it’s owned by the RegisterNow Whois Protection Service, so Alexa is lumping you in with others who don’t want it to be known what sites they’re running.
Alexa is unreliable—especially the traffic rankings, which only measure popularity with the Alexa-toolbar-using crowd. Any website popular with Mac or Linux users, or indeed Windows power users, is doing better than Alexa says it is. For example, even though reddit’s Alexa rank is far lower than digg’s, landing your site on reddit’s front page brings in at least three times the referrals that getting on digg does.
| Mar. 11, 2006 | |
| 7:12 am |
Just saw it tonight and man am I mad. I apparently oen several pron sites. Not true just happens to be a site I have with privacy and apparently the registar has those domains registered!
Great for business!
Just saw it tonight and man am I mad. I apparently oen several pron sites. Not true just happens to be a site I have with privacy and apparently the registar has those domains registered!
Great for business!
Hey, you should be thrilled. Porn sites are usually very successful. 
| Mar. 24, 2006 | |
| Arden | 12:26 am |
Just saw it tonight and man am I mad. I apparently oen several pron sites. Not true just happens to be a site I have with privacy and apparently the registar has those domains registered!
Great for business!
I can’t say I sympathize too much here. You’re bypassing the whois system by having some service claim to own the domain, and you’re getting lumped in with the whole class of people who don’t want to be known. If it’s a personal site, I don’t see why you’d care; if it’s a business site, why are you trying to be anonymous?
Businesses trying to be cagey about who they are raises all sorts of red flags as a consumer. If it’s a legitimate business, just own your domain, own up to it, and be proud of it.
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I want to know why the preview image is 403 forbaden.
Stupid Alexa.