Has dmoz been hijacked?

for www.dmoz.org I am getting your.com

[john5]

I cannot believe my eyes. For the url www.dmoz.org I get the homepage of www.your.com !!! The page shows [dmoz.org...] as address and a Page Rank of 9 (www.your.com has only PR5). I am accessing the page from Germany.

Honestly I am not drunk! I tried it several times. Is it only me?

[Mardi_Gras]

I can't say that it is only you, but it is working fine from where I sit in the U.S.

[oilman]

working fine from here. (Canada)

[brotherhood of LAN]

I'm seeing normal DMOZ, may have been some messing around in your cache perhaps :)

[john5]

I am still seeing your.com! I accessed it from my bookmarks and I tried it by typing it in several times. Can't be a personal mistake. Maybe some DNS mess of my Internet Access Provider. I am using T-Online, the largest German provider with some 5 million users or so. Absolutely crazy! Never experienced anything like this before.

Anyway, good to know that dmoz is still alive!

[brotherhood of LAN]

John5, by any chance was dmoz set as your home page

[john5]

no - never. Just in my bookmarks. And from there I check it from time to time to see if I got a new listing.

[The Contractor]

John5,

Try typing in www.dmoz.com (notice the .com). It should redirect you.

[john5]

For www.dmoz.com I am getting the "Page cannot be displayed" error message. And www.dmoz.org still displays the your.com homepage with a lovely PR9.

I guess this is a regional thing. It is now 1:00 AM in Germany and I am going to bed. If the effect is still there the next morning, I am putting it on a German webmaster forum to find out if I am the only one. And if yes - I should maybe make an appointment at my doctor's office.

[Quadrille]

Should be [dmoz.org...] ... no www

[heini]

Just connected via t-online - was taken directly to domz.org.

[john5]

same result with "Page cannot be displayed" error message and a PR9 in the toolbar.

[Jaze]

[dmoz.org...] works fine for me.

Try emptying your browser cache (as mentioned above) else try adaware - spy/scum-ware removal tool, that might help.

[edited by: Jaze at 1:55 am (utc) on June 7, 2002]

[The Contractor]

Found out the address of your.com

[www.dmoz.org.com...] and [dmoz.org.com...] and
[dmoz.org.com...]

your browser is playing tricks on you by adding www and .com ;)

[john5]

I cleared the browser cache and the browser history. Still the same.

[Dpeper]

It has become my strong belief that you are drunk and mis reading the screen ;) J/K

[john5]

something fishy is going on. I have a small local network with a Win2000 server and a local virtual DNS server and two Win98 clients. I have a suspicion. I could have become the target of an intruder manipulating my local DNS server. I use DSL and my line is open most of the time.
I am now shutting down my systems and will check my local DNS server tomorrow. I am too tired to do anything right now.

Thanks everybody for your help!

John

[Hunter]

John5,

you might be typing in dmoz.org to IE and then hitting Ctrl Enter out of habit to load it in your browser which would give you the address you are ending up on.

[The Contractor]

Hunter,
I expect that is what is happening :)

[tlpretender]

I have had this happen on another site before on a European server. It was a DNS issue. The server admin guys were testing things at the time. Do you have web access from another city?

[Jaze]

Try [anonymiser.com...] to access DMOZ, that might be one way to minimise things - perhaps?

[crunchy cajun]

It isn't your browser, it is your ISP.

Some ISPs, like mine (Starpower), do something that I believe is unethical, illegal and dishonest.

if someone tries to connect to a site (in this case the ODP) and the connection is not made for some reason, the ISP displays a page of their choosing.

Eventually (within the day) they will begin to present the real page again.

Starpower displays secondpower.com, which is so similar in nature to your.com that I have to believe they are operated by the same people.

In any event, it is scummy and unscrupulous and I hope those responsible get sued and lose everything.

[john5]

Hi everybody

I have not replied because I was at a complete loss the next morning. Everything was normal again!! I entered the dmoz url from my "favorites" and got dmoz.

And just now, there is a continuation. I wanted to enter an English-German dictionary at [dict.leo.org...] and got that yours.com Homepage again. And 10 minutes later, everything is normal again.

This is no topic for the dmoz thread and I am sorry if I confused anybody. Either someone is hacking my system or my service provider has a DNS problem.

Anyway, thanks for your support!