How to stop a 301 redirect from another server?

Industrial espionage and web trickery

[Brandish]

Hi everyone,

Just a quick question for my first post - we have a client and a competitor of theirs who are having a bit of a feud, and the latest development is that the competitor has registered an offensive domain name which they are now redirecting to our client's site using a 301 Permanent Redirect.

Therefore if you type in "www.[offensivephrase].com" you get sent straight to "www.[clientsite].com"

I have tried to block access by the originating IP address of the redirect in my htaccess file, but this didn't work. I also tried all sorts of combinations to try and block by HTTP_REFERER or HTTP_HOST but nothing seems to work.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

[g1smd]

Let's be absolutely clear here.

If you make a request to the other domain name, you receive back a 301 or 302 (please clarify which one) response redirecting you to the main site which then serves content. Live HTTP Headers can show you the status code.

To clarify, you see the URL in the browser URL bar change from what you typed, and change to the main site URL?

[Brandish]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply.

It is definitely a 301 - I used an online redirect checker, which gave me the following response:

Server Response : www.[offensivephrase].com
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:04:55 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) PHP/5.2.0-8+etch16 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c

And yes, I type in the offensive URL and after the redirect it changes to my client's URL.

[jdMorgan]

There's nothing you can do about this on your server, since the 301 from offensivephrase.com is under their control; The request, by the time you receive it, is a client request for your domain, and no information will be present in that request to indicate whether it was redirected from offensivephrase.com or not.

However, you may still have some avenues open for relief, both legal and regulatory.
If your client's domain name is trademarked, you could argue that the competitor is using it without authorization, and with malicious intent.
You might also be able to claim that the client is attempting to 'trade as' your client, but under another domain name.

Look into the offensivephrase.com domain registration. Does the registrar prohibit malicious use? Does it prohibit the domains that it registers from being pointed to servers not under control of the registrant without the permission of those servers' rightful owners/users?

Also look at ICANN's policies, and see what their policies on such questionable domain usage are.

Frankly, I'd advise your client to consult with a solicitor who was expertise in internet and Web matters.

Jim

[Brandish]

Thanks Jim,

I was afraid there was no technical solution to the problem, but just needed to make sure I hadn't missed any form of identification coming through on the request so that I could block it.

I am very grateful for everyones expertise in this forum, and as a regular reader I have always found the answers I am looking for here.

I have already advised the client to contact the domain registrar to air their concerns, and we'll see what happens from here.

Thanks again.