CLARIFICATION

For those who may be wondering: NO, I don't live in the Czech Republic and, NO, I don't make money by redirecting web traffic to porn sites. To make sense of what I'm saying, let's travel backwards in time, shall we?

Beginning in the year 2000 I began maintaining a dot com portfolio (etherbrian.com to be precise) and kept it going until February of this year when I instituted this humble blog. I developed such a strong preference for this newer personal presence that when my dot com expired on September 30, 2007, I didn't bother to renew it. I didn't think that anyone who peddles cheap meds, hot stocks, enhancement miracles, and/or OEM software would find "etherbrian" to be a name which would have any sort of draw on potential dupes ... uh, I mean customers.

Imagine my surprise when I inadvertently learned that the dot com had returned! It was back with the same eyeball and info I'd put there in February, the eyeball and info that had disappeared at 12:01 a.m. October 1. I hadn't had a hand in it, so who had?

Enter someone from the Czech Republic with a mind to generate a few koruna by pretending to be me while embedding links to pornography. I'm doubting there's anything I can do about it other than let the world know (the world being those of you who know what an etherbrian is) that this is just more of the dirty underhandedness that regularly emerges from the foul underbelly of society.

Comments

[Elaine Hooton]

Ugh! How disgusting. I feel for you. It is a good warning to others who decide to let a domain go, too. I've been thinking I might get a domain and hosting when my wordpress.com css edit upgrade expires. This is good information to have for the future. Some people are so...ugh!

[Dave Bastian]

Hence the wisdom of retaining an old domain (which is already probably heavily referenced by Google) and, if needed, simply pointing it to the new site with a link or redirect.

I know. Hindsight is always 20/20.

[Danielle Signor]

That really, really, really, really, REALLY... sucks. And, echoing Dave up there, this is why I hang onto a domain that I *know* would instantly turn into a porn site, were I to let it lapse and fall into evil hands. Blah.

The internet is just evil.

[Trula]

I feel you, that happened to me, with several domain names I let expire. it will blow over, no pun intended. it's aggravating

[Brian]

As I write this I am on hold with a nice person at Register.com who seems sincerely committed to fixing the problem. I suppose I'll chalk up this episode as another lesson learned at the School of Hard Knocks.

[extrarice]

Dude that sucks, man. As Danielle said above, that's why we haven't let a particular domain expire, though it's been unused since around 2001. For what it's worth, I doubt anyone would seriously believe that you would be behind a scam like that.

Character is defined as what a man is when nobody is watching, or he otherwise thinks he can get away with it. Humanity as a whole has very little character.

[Mike]

A similar thing happened to J.Otto Siebold. Especially unfortunate as his URL was prominently printed in his children's books. He's back online with a address. Here's a snippet from his first post at that domain:

"as some of you know, after a strong ten year presence on the interconnecternet...i got bumped, claim-jumped, hijacked out of my long held domain name. something about not being able to prove i was me (a very modern condition!) led the name gods to give jotto.com to a most useless gambling info site. the owner of which was so hard to get a hold of that the last attempt, a perfumed letter!, has now faded from any expectancy of a reply."

[Mike]

Whoops, that should have read "he's back online with a NEW address."

And much sympathy to you Brian!!

[Brian]

J. Otto? Well then! I feel a lot better because I feel like I'm now in good company!

Also, I feel like I might have overacted a bit. When the ne'er-do-well sees how little linky porn money he'll actually be making, he'll probably utter one of many Czechoslovakian curses he learned from creepy Uncle Bronislov and rue the day he wasted thirty-five U.S. dollars - thirty-five U.S. dollars he might have instead spent on a domain abandoned by a florist that might have been employed to point to hair restoration cream sites.

[Mr C.]

http://tinyurl.com/2gfy6h

[gswd]

And you can probably thank the folks at the Internet Time Machine for holding onto some of the older versions that they could use to play with.

http://tinyurl.com/229bs5