This evening, I noticed a website called spylog.net in my browser’s history. When I looked at it, it was all in Russian except for the headings. Nobody in my house speaks or reads Russian, and the name of the site worries me. A Google search didn’t turn up anything in English, at least for the first five pages. What is this site? Why is it in my history file?
I don’t know how they made it to your history folder, but it’s probably not something to worry about. They appear to be a legitimate Russian ISP. It looks like they may be the ISP for the English language version of Pravda.
A partial whois:
Query: spylog.netRegistry: whois.networksolutions.comResults:Registrant:
Andrey Ogandzhanyants (SPYLOG2-DOM) av-da Sierra Calderona, 46
Valencia, 46010 ES Domain Name: SPYLOG.NET
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
Zaitsev, Peter (PZ1181) pz@VIRUS.RU Lenensky prospekt 68 10
Moscow RU 132-32-32
Hmm…, that guy gets his mail at VIRUS.RU?
If you’re still curious to find out what the website says, do a screen print and take it to a college that has a Russian department and ask an instructor to translate.
Robin
Check out http://info.spylog.ru/about/index_en.phtml. This link is a company synopsis in English.
Spylog is a Russian marketing & public relations company. They are affiliated with the American accounting firm PriceWaterhouse.
Two years of college Russian finally put to use!
If you’re really worried, do you want to send me the website, and I’ll e-mail my professor and ask him?
I talked to my Russian friend from Moscow, who is a computer addict/website designer/system administrator. I don’t know much about computer and internet technology myself, so forgive my fumbling conveyance to you of the gist of what he said…
Spylog is a respectable big business (by Russian standards). They monitor websites and global internet statistics. My friend has used their services in the past to monitor hits on his website but he now uses “Webtrend” which he says is much the same thing. When I asked about the word “virus” in the email address he laughed and said it’s meaningless and just a joke.
My WAG about their appearance in your history folder? You went to a website that uses their traffic monitoring services.
Thanks, everybody. I guess I was just being paranoid. (The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!)
That makes more sense than my guess; I never saw their english language page, but gathered they had manny apparently straight-up clients who sport their logo on their websites (including Pravda).
So somewhere between an ISP and not? Website design (that’ll make a marketing/PR company out of you…)?
beatle, it’s a different world in Russia, and Russian businesses and entrepreneurs often do not resemble any Western business models. You will probably be unable to ever get a clear picture of the company as a whole since they have to be very devious to avoid being whip-sawed to death by the taxman and the mafia. ( I spent almost five years over there “implementing western business practice through the contracts and negotiations process”.) It’s like the old analogy of the Russian dolls that you keep twisting open and finding another, exactly the same or maybe different, smaller doll inside.