Blogspot redirects to MFA site? Haven't seen this before!

[Play_Bach]

I recently helped a friend move her site from Blogspot (Google's Blogger domain) to her own domain/hosting. I just checked on her Blogspot page and to my suprise a grey redirect window came up for about a second that says:

I have moved my blog to other domain
Let me redirect you... ;-)

--

But the redirect takes me - NOT to her site! - but to a <snip> page (white) with an AdSense large rectangle (Blue link, black text, black URL, no border, no Advertise on this site) on the left. Then on the right there's a picture of some guy with a cigar, then an AdLinks block below the words "New Popular Topics"

Unbelievable.

This all occurs on what looks like a single page with a drop shadow around it to make it look like a piece of paper. Scroll down five inches below that and you get to another drop shadow page with a "Featured Car Insurance Article" which is nothing more than a jumble of car insurance keywords! And to top it off - below that "page" (which really is what it looks like) - is a Google AdSense search box.

I did a search on the holder of the domain and it appears to be <snip>! Is there some kind of sweetheart deal between <snip> and AdSense/Blogger that's letting them have these redirects? If so, how do they get away with this?!

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:53 am (utc) on July 31, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] Removed specifics. See TOS. [/edit] [/edit][/1]

[Green_Grass]

It seems MFA's are finding new ways to get traffic .... QS is certainly forcing them to be innovative.

[Play_Bach]

> It seems MFA's are finding new ways to get traffic .... QS is certainly forcing them to be innovative.

But Blogspot is on Google's servers! How would somebody on the outside be able to do a redirect like this? That's what I don't get. On top of that, for it to be a major insurance company that owns the URL to be engaged in what can only be decribed as a gross violation of the AdSense TOS just blows my mind!

[Alioc]

Can it be your friend "shared" her password with another friend who has an affiliate account with that company? This can only be done by accessing the account you know.

The owner of the redirected page and what they do with it is another problem, and not yours in this situation isn't it?

Interrogate your friend and friend's friends.

---

Almost forgot; try it with another computer. Yours might be affected by an evilware. Checks browser, targets a domain, matches and redirects...

[edited by: Alioc at 6:11 am (utc) on July 31, 2006]

[Play_Bach]

> Can it be your friend "shared" her password

Nope. I'm the one who set up and also moved her site - and I certainly did not give/share the password with anybody and I'm almost 100% certain that she didn't either - though I will ask her to confirm. Even if the login/password combo was somehow stolen that still doesn't explain how a redirect can be done on the Blogspot servers without .htaccess - right? Or can it?

[pocket calculator]

I know exactly what this is.

When you update blogger to point to your domain instead of blogspot, it frees the blogspot URL so that someone else can take it and use it as their blog.

If someone decides to take it, your old blogspot blog is replaced by their blog on the first update.

Some spammer is snatching these up, much like spammers that snatch recently-expired domains. Then they fill the page with spammy affiliate crap (this is easy to do, because you have full control over the content of blogger pages via the template).

This happened to both my blogs after deleting them. They both have crap car insurance splogs on them (but not as fancy as what you describe).

Blogger is doing a very poor job of preventing people from using it as a spam tool.

[Play_Bach]

Thanks pocket calculator - interesting.
I understand how easy it is to change/modify the Blogger templates and have done so plenty. What I don't understand here is how to get it - the template - to do the redirect, because it's my understanding that that would have to be done in the .htaccess (or some equivalent protected directory) which Blogger users don't have access to. Interesting that you too saw car insurance ads - was the URL by any chance owned by Progressive?

[edited by: Play_Bach at 6:32 am (utc) on July 31, 2006]

[pocket calculator]

You can do a redirect with meta tags in the HTML. Look at meta-refresh for more info.

You can also use javascript to redirect using window.location (which is allowed in templates)

The spam domains on my blog URLs are behind a "Whois Protection Service", so I don't think it's the same.

I doubt it's directly progressive that's involved, it's probably an affiliate redirecting to a progressive page with his/her affiliate ID.

[Alioc]

This is so sad. No redemption period, nothing, and boom a jerk grabs the URL.

[Play_Bach]

> I doubt it's directly <snip> that's involved, it's probably an affiliate redirecting to a <snip> page with his/her affiliate ID.

But the insurance company owns the domain! How does this work without them being involved?

[jomaxx]

Note that publishers have been banned for using "sneaky redirects" to drive traffic.