Domain dl6kac.de grabbed by spammers
This is a a longer story…
Surprise, Surprise
On March 7th I received a nice surprise: While trying to post a new article on my blog I got a HTTP 404 not found error… :gruebel: First I thought that my hoster had some problem again (see this post) but everything worked fine. Additionally my other projects Ham Radio Blogs Webdirectory and the upcoming Ham Radio Contest Wiki were working fine. Therefore something else must have happened. I then checked FTP access: No problems there and all content was still there. I then checked the root page @ dl6kac.de and got a 403 forbidden.
What could have happend then? :gruebel:
What is going on?
Finally I understood what happened. My callsign domain dl6kac.de got grabbed by a spammer. The DENIC (registration authority responsible here in DL for all .de domains) did no longer show my address. Instead it lists an english company which sells Apple-Pies as the owner.
A comparison of the server IP addresses confirmed that.
DENIC listing for dl6kac.de
Screenshot of grandma-anns-applepie.com
new content on dl6kac.de
What the hell?
Why did that happen? According to my hoster the company which does the registrations of domains for my hoster a CLOSE had been issued. Either by me or by my hoster. This did not happen. Neither by me nor by my hoster. Therefore something went wrong at the company who does the registrations. In the meantime the hoster is no longer customer of this company as similar problems have occured before.
Bottom line
DL6KAC is now blogging @
Additionally I would like to ask you to remove all links to dl6kac.de as you are more or less helping a spammer. The domain now contains a JS redirect to a domain parking site which displays pure ads.
Update: A similar thing has happened to Marcus @ nanoblog.de. Marcus the owner, is now blogging on NanoPub. Coincidence? :gruebel:
[tags]ham radio, amateur radio, dl6kac, spam, domain grabber[/tags]
March 18th, 2007 22:41
Sorry to hear that spammers got hold of your domain name that really sucks
lets hope it doesn’t happen again, but the Ham Radio Contest Wiki sounds interesting though! 
March 19th, 2007 07:19
a good chance for the students interested in the astronomy!!!!!
March 19th, 2007 07:20
babal ho ni yar janne manchhe lai ta !!!!
March 19th, 2007 08:03
Hi Peter,
thanks for your comment. Yes, this really sucks … but sometimes sh*t happens … :thumpdown: It could have come worse like hacked FTP account or something like that.
WRT the contest wiki. This is a project I am working on with a friend of mine. Unfortunately we are both very busy right now so that this project has to take a back seat
. The idea is to provide an introduction to contesting for interested hams. As far as I know nothing similar exists on the web. Unfortunately as mentioned before I haven’t yet found the time to put some content online. The wiki should not be limited to contesting only. But for a start I think it is a good subject.
73
Christian
March 20th, 2007 23:29
[...] The Web domain of popular ham radio blogger, DL6KAC was recently hijacked by spammers. It’s a tale of cyber swash-buckling that could very well happen to you — so read about it and learn. [...]
March 21st, 2007 01:07
Friends were able to regain control of a domain hijacked like this that belonged to a community group. The registrar did “park” the domain for a couple weeks while letters were sent back and forth. As in most cases you have paid money for domain registration and for hosting, hijacking is seen as a theft.
I’ve an article coming out later this week on how to us the resources to deal with internet fraud on this side of the pond.
Sorry to hear of your troubles, I’m glad to see that you had copies of your content!
73
Steve
K9ZW
http://k9zw.wordpress.com
March 21st, 2007 06:46
Hi Steve,
thanks for your comment. I agree with you that hijacking a domain is theft (especially in this case as never a CLOSE has been issued). The problem is that the address mentioned @ DENIC is forged. Therefore contacting the grabber is a little difficult. The only way is to go via the authorities and most of the times the don’t accept your case. DENIC here in DL doesn’t help either. The whole process is automated and the legitimate owner of the domain is not contacted in any way. I think this is a great part of the problem. But I am working on it and let’s see how it turns out … Will keep you guys posted
.
A similar thing has happened to google.de & ebay.de but as you can imagine this situation did not last very long.
Drop me a note when you have your article ready so that I can mention it in my blog. :thumpup:
73
Christian, DL6KAC
June 17th, 2008 02:09
Hi Steve,
We have recently had *exactly* the same scenario happen to us by our friends at grandma-anns-applepie.com. Please drop me an email and let me know if you had any luck either retrieving the domain or getting in touch with the guys behind the scam.
Many thanks.
February 18th, 2009 13:35
Something similar happened to me yesterday. Is there any possibility to get a domain that “grandma-ann” “owns” now?