DNS for someone else's domain pointed to my server - why?

October 14, 2010 8:42 AM

I recently moved my website to a new server. Today I discovered another domain pointing to this server. So visiting othersite.info effectively served my content. Why did they do this? What did they have to gain?

Apache was initially configured to serve my site as the default, which is why this worked for them. i.e. visiting my server by IP address or any domain pointed there, would serve the site.

I've corrected this so that my site is only served at the domain for which it was intended.

Their domain is yingfuwang dot info. It's DNS is still pointed to my server, but I've modified this to serve an empty page.

I've never heard of this before though and was wondering what the benefit for them is? What further steps should I take?

posted by Gomez_in_the_South to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Like as not they're trying to take advantage of your content-creation effort to get themselves a high Google score. Eventually they will then switch to their own content i.e. advertising.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:44 AM on October 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: They were probably the folks using that IP address before you, and never bothered to update their DNS after whatever event made them stop. Just add them as a virtual host that serves a 404.
posted by mendel at 9:12 AM on October 14, 2010 [3 favorites]

Maybe they just made a mistake when creating their CNAME?
posted by JaredSeth at 9:51 AM on October 14, 2010

As mendel says they were probably a client that your new host recently terminated and then recycled that IP assignment when setting up your server. Hosts don't have the luxury of retiring viable IP addresses these days, as they have to show justification when asking for more from the registries which generally means demonstrating a certain existing usage ratio above some threshold.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:09 AM on October 14, 2010

Response by poster: I'm told that 'Yingfu wang' is like 'winners net', and after a little more digging it seems to be linked to the dot com of the same domain name the contents of which seem quite spammy. So I think Chocolate Pickle may be right.

The old IP address theory is a reasonable possibility too though.

Further opinions and theories are most welcome.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 12:50 PM on October 14, 2010