urlwww--domainname SITE THEFT

I help to manage a site that has been copied/stolen on 5 different
occasions from spammers overseas.
The site has over 20,000 pages and is a target for people looking to
steal content to run their own Google or Yahoo ads until they get
caught by me or Google/Yahoo -- then they shut down and move on to the
next website and repeat the process.

This time we caught someone early by watching our raw log files.
I can't post the URL here as we are still gathering evidence and do
not want them to suspect that we know, HOWEVER
I would like some feedback on why these crooks choose to use this URL
format.

http://urlwww--mydomainname--net.theirdomainname.com/

Is there any admin. purpose to using the sub-domain (urlwww)?

Thanks,
Rick

Re: urlwww--domainname SITE THEFT

Hi Rick,

I beleive such a format makes it difficult for users to validate links or
web sites. I have seen such links, predomenantly in spam and I assume its
purpose is to deceive users into clicking the links. At first glance an
unsuspecting user would read the url from left to right and unthinkingly
extreact the domain name out of the leading www and com parts.

It would also make it difficult for search engines to destinguish between
the legitimate and fake site. If the search engine is indexing content with
domain name, their algrithims to extract the domain name may be using string
matching to extract the domain name from the www and com parts. Since the
Phishing sites have the same content as your site (check their site for the
existance of robots.txt in the root folder) they may not appear in their
listings with thier contorted domain name. I would bet that they block
spiders from indexing their content.

Visit the Anti-Phishing Working Group for more information
http://www.antiphishing.org/

There are a number of services where you can report suspect web sites.
McAffey's SiteAdvisor.com is my recommendation.

Regards.
"RickVidallon" wrote in message
news:1188930311.902961.62550@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
>I help to manage a site that has been copied/stolen on 5 different
> occasions from spammers overseas.
> The site has over 20,000 pages and is a target for people looking to
> steal content to run their own Google or Yahoo ads until they get
> caught by me or Google/Yahoo -- then they shut down and move on to the
> next website and repeat the process.
>
> This time we caught someone early by watching our raw log files.
> I can't post the URL here as we are still gathering evidence and do
> not want them to suspect that we know, HOWEVER
> I would like some feedback on why these crooks choose to use this URL
> format.
>
> http://urlwww--mydomainname--net.theirdomainname.com/
>
> Is there any admin. purpose to using the sub-domain (urlwww)?
>
> Thanks,
> Rick
>