I have accessed a particular website (call it [noparse]www.xyz.org[/noparse]) for a few months now. Yesterday, when trying to get to it, I found myself at a website with the same URL, but it was something entirely different - a sort of portal website for other searches and sites. (I don’t begin to understand what it was, really). How could they have the same URL as the one I was heading to? How has it replaced the one that I wanted? How do I repair this? Is this the result of a virus? Any ideas here, Dopers? Thanks.
Just to clarify, is it now impossible for you to get to the first website?
Why don’t you go ahead and tell us the URL in question?
Two distinct websites cannot share a URL; to the extent that they share a URL, they are the same Internet entity, though of course it can present itself differently on different occasions. The most likely scenarios are that either the website you used to visit changed, or that you made a typo and didn’t realize it, the second website existing solely to capitalize upon this.
Same URL and now you get a “parked” website? That means the domain name has been abandoned or transferred. The old website has either moved or it’s gone.
It’s called cloaking and it can be done for good reasons and for bad reasons.
Suppose my website is Markxx.Com
You type it in your browser. I have my website read your information. If your IP Address is a GoogleBot (a robot used by Google for indexing websites), I give you one set of legit data. If it’s anyone else they get spam
Of course Google doesn’t like this. But to some degree they put up with it. For instance, ever wonder why a site caches data, but when you look for it, it requires you to sign up to see the data. That site cloaks. It allows Google to get in without signing in but make you register to read it. To some degree Google puts up with it.
There are legit reasons for this.
For instance, by reading your IP address I can get a general idea of your location
So let’s say I run a site with TV listings at Markxxx. When you type in the URL I can read your IP address and give you the listing for the closest TV market to your URL.
In the OP case it could simply be a site redesign.
Be sure you didn’t just make a small typo in your URL. Sometimes URLs with only a small difference from a legit one will lead to a search portal looking site.
Example:
Americangirl.com will take you to the famous doll seller
Americagirl.com will take you to a portal that searches for toys and doll related stuff
In other words, when you type in something like www.example.com, you are asking to be redirected to a location where there are files that will display the contents of your website.
Two things may have happened:
- someone has changed the files that display the contents of the website;
- or someone has changed www.example.com so that it points to a different location, where there are different files, representing another website.
The second thing is the one that is most likely to have happened. The person who owned the www.example.com name forgot to pay for its renewal, and someone else bought www.example.com, and then redirected the name to another new website. They are trying to grab the traffic that www.example.com used to have, and use it to generate money on advertisements.
I assume the first web site did not come back, did it?
It’s a common enough story. The owners of the web site either have given up on it/has gone out of business etc., or they simple forgot to renew the registration of their domain name, so the registration lapses. There are companies (e.g. Sedo) that specialize in registering domain names whose registration has lapsed, and put an advertising page on the URL, with cookie cutter content that often takes into account the semantics of the domain name and keywords associated with it. The object of the exercise is to capitalize on visitors like you who visit the URL intending to visit the web site that previously was thre.
Another possibility, albeit less likely than just a minor typo when you went to the URL, is DNS hijacking. This is basically malware that changed your DNS settings to use a different DNS server: the new server can deliver any page it wants for any URL. They’re becoming more common these days because they’re difficult to notice and they can hijack a large number of sites simultaneously.
It’s easy to check this: just verify that the DNS servers listed on your computer are the ones your ISP gave you.
You might as well have asked me to sprout wings and fly to the moon.
One other bit of information - two friends of mine in different locations have had no trouble of this kind. Makes me suspect either an intruder, as you posit, or my typing, which I’ve check innumerable times. In fact, I’ve even attempted to get to that site by clicking on a link to it in a document I posted on line. It worked before, not now.
You can also get a different website from the same company depending on where you’re physically located. Germany has arranged to have GMail.com blocked due to a trademark dispute (Gmail - Wikipedia).
Now, whether Google might think your computer is in Germany, even when it isn’t… well that gets into some of the hacking / cloning such described up above.
Sounds awfully like a browser hijacking (assuming you’re not misstyping or the website is kaput). Run Malwarebytes.
Could it be a case sensitivity issue?
I have had it happen maybe once every other year but it usually ends up in a 404, not a parked domain.
Nope. Not case sensitivity. Here’s the address: www.hffoundation.org It’s supposed to be a site for a foundation associated with Homewood-Flossmoor high school, ergo, hffoundation. But when I click on it in a document, or type it in the address window, I wind up at a totally different type of website. I just did a scan of my computer. Nothing. WTF?
I get the portal website.
Even going to the school’s website they have a few links to the HF foundation, all of those sites are wrong also. A Whois on the foundation site said it was updated last week. I’m guessing they don’t have that site anymore. I’d suggest you email someone at http://www.hfhighschool.org/ and see if they can point you in the right direction.
here is the information on who owns the domain:
Looks like it was renewed last week OK.
But perhaps he forgot to pay his annual ISP bill, so they parked it for him. contact the guy, tell him to pay the ISP, and they will restore it. It is just a few settings, not lilke he will have to do anything technical. during the grace period - after a while the ISP will just dump everything while keeping the domain parked like this.
That’s a very happy whois.
Never mind.
Have your friends gone to the website today, and done a “refresh” in their web browser? They might be seeing an old version of the page.
Well that is odd. Every time I click that link I get a quite different portal/parked site. I tried Googling “Homewood-Flossmoor foundation” and it gave me the same URL, also going to a parked site page. I guess that means its not you or your computer, CC, the page has been allowed to expire.