In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection, many
brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google entry had
my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and phone number.

The 3rd entry was for www.acmesupply.net which is my friend's webpage,
and it was for my friend's business.

The next 5 hits were all my friend's business, 3 of which were like
www.acmesupply.net\home and two of which were like
acmesupply.net\contactus , but still went to one of his pages.

The next two (it only displayed 10 on the first page) were listings
of his business on yellowpages and manta, and his linkedin page.


If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers, which
makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH, will the
average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection, many
brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google entry had
my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and phone number.

The 3rd entry was for www.acmesupply.net which is my friend's webpage,
and it was for my friend's business.

The next 5 hits were all my friend's business, 3 of which were like
www.acmesupply.net\home and two of which were like
acmesupply.net\contactus , but still went to one of his pages.

The next two (it only displayed 10 on the first page) were listings
of his business on yellowpages and manta, and his linkedin page.


If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers, which
makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH, will the
average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

Are these the real the URL that you used? Nothing comes up for them.
Therefore I don't have a clue what was happening. Doubt you can get a
URL changed unless it is identical.

It's confusing if you don't use the real URLs. You
say the sneaker store has the same URL. Is that
a misprint on your part?

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?

His url is about his trade and his business, which has nothing to do
with sneakers.

I'm not going to post my friend's url without discussing it with him
first, and the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.


page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection, many
brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google entry had
my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and phone number.

.....

If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers, which
makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH, will the
average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:40:29 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

It's confusing if you don't use the real URLs. You
say the sneaker store has the same URL. Is that
a misprint on your part?

They are the same except one has www in front and the other doesn't.

| It's confusing if you don't use the real URLs. You
| say the sneaker store has the same URL. Is that
| a misprint on your part?
|
| They are the same except one has www in front and the other doesn't.

There's something missing from this story. I can understand
if you want to protect your friend's privacy, but without
checking it out ourselves there's no way to know what's
going on.

If your friend owns his domain then he owns
the whole thing -- acmesupply.net. Someone else can't buy
the subdomain. Usually a subdomain is a folder on the server.
For instance, files.acmesupply.net can be set up to point
to a folder names "files". www is default. Usually if a website
is not set up to respond to just the domain name, the browser
will automatically try adding "www."

All of that is to say that the other link is probably
not to the same domain, even though it may seem so.
To find out you have to right-click the link, copy it,
aste it into Notepad, then extract the real link from
Googles spyware link. For example, I just searched
for Sears and got www.sears.com. That's what Google
tells me the link goes to, but it actually doesn't. The
link is like so:

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://...T39DaWCVrpjHQg

Google is sending my click through their server, along with
a kind of cookie. (You really should switch to duckduckgo.)

If both links are, indeed, to acmesupply.com then why
not visit the sneaker link and see what you find? It may
be that your friend has not paid for legitimate webhosting
but is instead trying to save a few bucks by hosting his
site on a cheap or freebie server that shows ads.

A third possibility is that your browser has been infected
with malware that's injecting ads.

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?

His url is about his trade and his business, which has nothing to do
with sneakers.

I'm not going to post my friend's url without discussing it with him
first, and the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.


page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection, many
brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google entry
had my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and phone number.

....

If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers, which
makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH, will the
average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

Is there any reason you would not?

On 11/18/2015 4:18 PM, Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?


No, is the answer to your question but there is some missing and
confusing information in your post. We own a computer business and also
own MANY domain names so I do know I bit about the subject. To satisfy
your curiosity may I suggest that you simply point your browser to
http://www.netim.com/domain-name/whois-search.html and search for the
domain name of your friend. The resulting info will show who actually
owns it, etc.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:27:31 -0800, "Bob F"
wrote:

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?

His url is about his trade and his business, which has nothing to do
with sneakers.

I'm not going to post my friend's url without discussing it with him
first, and the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection, many
brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google entry
had my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and phone number.

....

If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers, which
makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH, will the
average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

Is there any reason you would not?

What I just said:
....the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.

He works 50 hours a week or more, is always on call, and he has plenty
of annoyances already: customers who don't pay (although he can tell
that the recession is almost over because many more customers are
paying), impossible to find enough qualified staff, even though he
pays a good salary and benefits including sick and vacation days and
health insurance (he's not big enough to covered by the law that says
he has to, but he still has for more than 10 years), not actually
making a profit some years but holding out for better years, etc. He
doesn't need another annoyance unless it's something that can be
solved.

And even then maybe the time to solve it would be more than it's
worth, if this page isn't actually costing him business. I don't
know what the average googler thinks if he sees it ??, and if he goes
to the next 6 hits which are all for my friend's business.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 17:35:20 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| It's confusing if you don't use the real URLs. You
| say the sneaker store has the same URL. Is that
| a misprint on your part?
|
| They are the same except one has www in front and the other doesn't.

There's something missing from this story. I can understand
if you want to protect your friend's privacy, but without
checking it out ourselves there's no way to know what's
going on.

Despite everyone's complaints about this, several of you have given
some helpful advice.

If your friend owns his domain then he owns
the whole thing -- acmesupply.net. Someone else can't buy
the subdomain. Usually a subdomain is a folder on the server.
For instance, files.acmesupply.net can be set up to point
to a folder names "files". www is default. Usually if a website
is not set up to respond to just the domain name, the browser
will automatically try adding "www."

All of that is to say that the other link is probably
not to the same domain, even though it may seem so.
To find out you have to right-click the link, copy it,
aste it into Notepad, then extract the real link from
Googles spyware link. For example, I just searched
for Sears and got www.sears.com. That's what Google
tells me the link goes to, but it actually doesn't. The
link is like so:

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://...T39DaWCVrpjHQg

Google is sending my click through their server, along with
a kind of cookie.

Okay, that helps. I right-clicked and the link is like yours above,
although it has a lot more junk before it gets to the actual link:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...S2oF6HNeBiWnUw

And when I paste this in a location bar and click, it goes again to
the sneakers webpage. Where, in case I didnt' mention it,
acmesupply.net appears in the location bar at the top of the How
do you suppose that extra garbage makes it go to the wrong url?
Because when I paste acmesupply.net , without the garbage OR the www,
it goes to my friend's home page.

I've changed his url to acmesupply again. (No matter how curious you
folks are, I'm not discussing my friend's url by name and in public.)

(You really should switch to duckduckgo.)

I've heard about that, but had little reason to try it. So I tried it
this time.

A) it doesn't highlight or otherwise indicate that I've been to one of
the webpages listed, not even via duckduckgo. That's a great
convenience with google, both for finding urls I want to see again,
and for finding new ones I haven't seen. (Google changes color, but
changes it so little, I had to modify a file deep in the firefox weeds
to make the change noticeable.)

B) It started with ads too, but more importantly, using the same
search terms acme supply baltimore it never found my friend's
url, first not in the first 32 hits!! After 32 it said "Load more",
and I loaded 146 more hits, and it still didn't find my friend. I
did however find several of his competitors, and I found several YP,
and superpages pages, some that listed him with all his competitors,
and a couple that mentioned only him. I found a url for the
singular** of his url name (and it's in California, and is not a
competitor)

**Lets assume his site was farmtools.net . DDG brought back
farmtool.net , the singular, but not farmtools.net or
www.farmtools.net.

After the first 20 or so, it didn't insist that all 3 search terms
have a relationship to what it found. It forgot about Baltimore or
Supply or Acme, and it never found my friend's page or any subpage, or
the sneaker site for that matter. Google, for all my complaints,
found him 4th, after two ads and the sneaker site, and then found 5 of
his subpages next. And then YP and Superpages sites that were about
him, and then his Linkedin Page. Duckduckgo never found his
linkedin page either.

If both links are, indeed, to acmesupply.com then why
not visit the sneaker link and see what you find? It may

That's a good idea. I went there and it had links to Register,
Contact Us, Help, etc. All of them used a different domain, like
www.gosneaker.com\register (Like, but not that.)

be that your friend has not paid for legitimate webhosting
but is instead trying to save a few bucks by hosting his
site on a cheap or freebie server that shows ads.

No, I know he's not doing that, and I went to the Whois site Igot
recommended and he's listed as the owner, complete with his full name,
POB and suburban town. I would have looked up without the www, but
it's hard coded in front of the URL box on that page.

A third possibility is that your browser has been infected
with malware that's injecting ads.

Given what's above, that I copied the link from Google and it was that
long link, and each time I used it, it gave the same sneaker site, I
don't think that's it.

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015 03:09:58 -0500, Micky
wrote:

After 32 it said "Load more",
and I loaded 146 more hits, and it still didn't find my friend. I
did however find several of his competitors, and I found several YP,
and superpages pages, some that listed him with all his competitors,
and a couple that mentioned only him. I found a url for the
singular** of his url name (and it's in California, and is not a
competitor)

It even found acmesupply.eu !!! It has a 353 country code
(Ireland), links for 6 european countries, and quotes prices in
British pounds. Here it is, HQ in London. Not a competitor, but if
DDG found it, it should have found my friend.

Also found something with a similar name in Switzerland.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 21:30:12 -0600, IGot2P
wrote:

On 11/18/2015 4:18 PM, Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?


No, is the answer to your question but there is some missing and
confusing information in your post.

Exactly. It's confusing how the search leads to a page not related to
the search.

We own a computer business and also
own MANY domain names so I do know I bit about the subject. To satisfy
your curiosity may I suggest that you simply point your browser to
http://www.netim.com/domain-name/whois-search.html and search for the
domain name of your friend. The resulting info will show who actually
owns it, etc.

Okay, I did that, and he's listed as the owner, complete with his full
name, POB and suburban town. I would have looked up acmesupply
without the www, but WWW is hard-coded in front of the URL box on that
page.

Thanks, and if I didn't say it, thanks all.

I could contact that sneaker site, but I doubt they'll know what to do
or be willing to spend much time doing it, especially since if
anything it brings them a teeny tiny bit of more business.

And google doesn't even have an email address.

Though I did complain strongly about the new format of google maps, on
their on-the-map comment box, and I don't read my gmail, but I finally
read it and they replied on topic and really did get rid of the boxes
that annoyed me, just like I asked. (and probably millions of others
did too.)

| (You really should switch to duckduckgo.)
|
| I've heard about that, but had little reason to try it. So I tried it
| this time.
|
| A) it doesn't highlight or otherwise indicate that I've been to one of
| the webpages listed, not even via duckduckgo.

That may be because the Google links are not actually
to the website. Showing a visited link color depends on
the webpage and your browser history. So when you
go to DDG your browser may not see those links as
visited because they're not Google links. I know DDG
doesn't block a visited color because I see them.

| B) It started with ads too, but more importantly, using the same
| search terms acme supply baltimore it never found my friend's
| url, first not in the first 32 hits!!

Interesting. I do find Google helps in some cases
when I can't find things through DDG, but your
description is extreme. I'm guessing that's probably
mostly due to Google spyware. Anyone who allows
such things as cookies and script will usually see a
customized page at Google. They guess at what you're
interested in. (I stopped reading their news for the
same reason. I want to read the news, not what
Google's code guesses I'm interested in reading.)

In other words, your friend's site may not be
nearly as highly rated as it seems to be when you
do a Google search. It might be interesting to have
other friends do a search and see what they get.

If you don't actively study and apply privacy
techniques then you're probably being tracked by
about a dozen companies, nearly everywhere you go.
Google is the most extreme, by far. But they're only
one. Facebook will know most of the sites you visit
even if you don't have a Facebook account, so long
as you allow frames and don't block them in your
HOSTS file.

[ Even visited links, actually, are sometimes used for
tracking. Script can be used to determine the font
color of an item on the page. By adding lots of links
to a page, even if they're not visible, script can track
which of those sites are in your browser history. (I don't
think Google bothers with such esoterica. Most people
allow Google to spy on everything they do, anyway.
And they can track your movements through the booby-
trapped links themselves. But it's an interesting bit of
trivia.) ]

The result of all that tracking is that most people
are seeing a lot of custom-generated webpages. The
ads, especially, will be custom. But often the content is
custom: links, news, item prices...all can change
depending on what the website host knows about you.

I'm curious about what's happening, but I can't think
of a likely answer based on the information you've
provided. If you don't want to share the details you
may just have to figure it out for yourself. But it might
be worth checking whether you can find another case
of the same thing. If you're getting 2 different sites
and you're *sure* they both result from the exact same
domain, then that sounds like it could be something
on your system. In other words, if you go to xyz.net
and it's the wrong place, but www.xyz.net is not the
wrong place, that could be a HOSTS file corruption,
a malware browser plugin, or something that's changed
your DNS server.
You can check all of those. Check all of your plugins.
Check your HOSTS file. In network settings, select
the Properties of the tcp/ip item to see your DNS setting.
It's usually provided by your ISP. A better option is to
use OpenNIC

107.170.95.180 (NY, US)
104.237.144.172 (NJ, US)
75.127.14.107 (NY, US)

or OpenDNS

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

You can look up your current DNS server
IP here, if you think it might be suspicious:

http://www.ip-adress.com/whois/

For those who don't know, DNS is domain
name server. It's essentially a phone book.
The real address of xyz.net is not xyz.net
but rather a numeric IP address. DNS servers
provide translation for browsers. So one
way malware can work is to replace your
DNS server IP address with another, dishonest
one. By doing that they can do things like
send you to scam.cn when you type in a
URL for online banking, and your browser will
show you to be at your bank's website.
The HOSTS file is your local version of DNS,
like your personal phone number list. It overrides
DNS because browsers will check it first. So
that's another malware target.

Personally I'd be most suspicious about a
plugin, because that can edit the page you
see, while a DNS server can only change
where you end up when you enter xyz.net.
But, again, this is grasping at straws without
knowing the details.

Micky writes:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to have
name.net?

The order of Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup is:

1) First lookup ".net" at the root server. Returns the
IP address(es) of the DNS server for .net
2) Now lookup "name" at the DNS server for .net. Returns
the IP address(es) of the DNS server for name.net.
3) Now lookup www at the DNS server for name.net. returns
the IP address(es) ('A' record) of the server 'www'.

So, name.net 'owns' the subdomain www, in the sense that it
is responsible for providing the IP address of the server
'www.name.net'.

Which means you have it backwards. It is permitted for the owner
of name.net to 'sublet' www.name.net to an external entity such
as your friend.

Likely his website is hosted by 'name.net', someone has screwed
up the DNS configuration or Google is inserting ads. Try running
with adblockplus.

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:27:31 -0800, "Bob F"
wrote:

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to
have name.net?

His url is about his trade and his business, which has nothing to do
with sneakers.

I'm not going to post my friend's url without discussing it with him
first, and the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection,
many brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google
entry had my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and
phone number.

....

If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers,
which makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH,
will the average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

Is there any reason you would not?

What I just said:
....the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.

He works 50 hours a week or more, is always on call, and he has plenty
of annoyances already: customers who don't pay (although he can tell
that the recession is almost over because many more customers are
paying), impossible to find enough qualified staff, even though he
pays a good salary and benefits including sick and vacation days and
health insurance (he's not big enough to covered by the law that says
he has to, but he still has for more than 10 years), not actually
making a profit some years but holding out for better years, etc. He
doesn't need another annoyance unless it's something that can be
solved.

And even then maybe the time to solve it would be more than it's
worth, if this page isn't actually costing him business. I don't
know what the average googler thinks if he sees it ??, and if he goes
to the next 6 hits which are all for my friend's business.

If someone is selling things from "his" site, and maybe just taking the money
and never shipping anything, your "friend" might want to know. He'll get the
complaints.

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015 09:37:28 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| (You really should switch to duckduckgo.)
|
| I've heard about that, but had little reason to try it. So I tried it
| this time.
|
| A) it doesn't highlight or otherwise indicate that I've been to one of
| the webpages listed, not even via duckduckgo.

That may be because the Google links are not actually
to the website. Showing a visited link color depends on
the webpage and your browser history. So when you

I figured if it has the color that means it's been visited, the page
is in the (firefox, say) cache. And that if you purge the cache, as
they sometimes suggest doing, there will be no indication you've been
anywhere. (and I like knowing because sometimes I want go to a page
I've already been to, and sometimes I want a new page.

go to DDG your browser may not see those links as
visited because they're not Google links. I know DDG
doesn't block a visited color because I see them.

The last sentence, I don't understand at all.


| B) It started with ads too, but more importantly, using the same
| search terms acme supply baltimore it never found my friend's
| url, first not in the first 32 hits!!

Interesting. I do find Google helps in some cases
when I can't find things through DDG, but your
description is extreme. I'm guessing that's probably
mostly due to Google spyware. Anyone who allows
such things as cookies and script will usually see a
customized page at Google. They guess at what you're

Google definitely knows I'm in Baltimore. It always knows that. I
just searched for Supply (For new readers of the thread, it's not
really supply. The actual category is still a secret.) and it gave me
a list of supply stores in Baltimore. Alas, there were 60 or 80 and
he was not listed.

That's largely because he's near but not in Baltimore. (His business
is near his home so he doesn't have to commute much, especially when
he goes in more than once in a day.)

He hasn't complained about that exactly, but he has complained that if
a generic search is done, for supply, he doesn't come up anywhere near
the top. He may have even paid to get himself higher, but his
competitors are paying too. And alphabetically, his company doesn't
start with A, like Acme does. It's much closer to the end of the
alphabet, even though it's a good name -- notice how many other supply
companies had similar names.

Did you realize that Aamco Transmissions started off as a shlock
business that had so little going for it they had to start their name
with 2 A's so that people looking in the Yellow Pages found them
first? Wikip says it's more complicated, "In 1957, he founded the
Anthony A. Martino Company, or AAMCO in Philadelphia, under the name
AAMCO Auto and Truck Repair. This name was chosen not only to reflect
the initials of the founder, but also to make it appear higher in the
Yellow pages listings of the day.[3] "

I retract the word shlock.

From the footnote, the Aamco blog, "By 1957, with the demand for his
signature transmission repair service booming, Martino opened his
first repair shop three miles from the ESSO station at 133 East
Eleanor Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia. He called the shop AAMCO
Auto and Truck Repair as he did engine and other minor repairs at the
shop beyond transmissions. At this time, people became aware that the
AAMCO acronym stood for Anthony A. Martino Company. The name was easy
to remember but also marketing genius for its top alphabetical listing
in the yellow pages under auto repair, as there was no separate “Auto
Transmission” category at the time."

interested in. (I stopped reading their news for the
same reason. I want to read the news, not what
Google's code guesses I'm interested in reading.)

In other words, your friend's site may not be
nearly as highly rated as it seems to be when you
do a Google search. It might be interesting to have
other friends do a search and see what they get.

I can ask a friend to do that.

If you don't actively study and apply privacy
techniques then you're probably being tracked by
about a dozen companies, nearly everywhere you go.
Google is the most extreme, by far. But they're only
one. Facebook will know most of the sites you visit
even if you don't have a Facebook account, so long
as you allow frames and don't block them in your
HOSTS file.

I should use my HOSTS file more. Frames? Frames on webpages? I
havent' seen them for a long time.

Years ago I was having trouble using Facebook search**, and I thought
maybe it's because I wasn't registered, so I registered but told them
nothing about myself, including my real name. Then my young niece had
a page and she asked me to be a friend and I said okay if I can use a
phony name. But then I started using my Facebook account in place of
registering. Does that mean she gets spam from every website I sign
into using my Facebook account?

**Search didn't work any better after I registered and the guy is
probably dead. He was not a friend, just trouble, and I wondered if
he ever straightened out.

[ Even visited links, actually, are sometimes used for
tracking. Script can be used to determine the font
color of an item on the page. By adding lots of links
to a page, even if they're not visible, script can track
which of those sites are in your browser history. (I don't
think Google bothers with such esoterica. Most people
allow Google to spy on everything they do, anyway.
And they can track your movements through the booby-
trapped links themselves. But it's an interesting bit of
trivia.) ]

The older I get, the less I have to loose. I figure I can explose
myself to 20-year carcinogens now and I won't get cancer until I'm 88.
If nothing unusual happens, that's how long I expect to live anyhow,
though I could die anytime between tomorrow and 104, no 106.

The result of all that tracking is that most people
are seeing a lot of custom-generated webpages. The
ads, especially, will be custom. But often the content is
custom: links, news, item prices...all can change
depending on what the website host knows about you.

I'm curious about what's happening, but I can't think
of a likely answer based on the information you've
provided. If you don't want to share the details you
may just have to figure it out for yourself. But it might
be worth checking whether you can find another case
of the same thing. If you're getting 2 different sites
and you're *sure* they both result from the exact same
domain, then that sounds like it could be something
on your system. In other words, if you go to xyz.net
and it's the wrong place, but www.xyz.net is not the
wrong place, that could be a HOSTS file corruption,
a malware browser plugin, or something that's changed
your DNS server.
You can check all of those. Check all of your plugins.
Check your HOSTS file.

The one in windows\system32\drivers\etc has only two lines:
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost

There is one other, with a longer path name, and for some reason
Everything is showing my other partitions, even though the harddrive
dock is turned off! Last time I used Everything, when I turned off
the dock, only files in the C: partition showed.


In network settings, select
the Properties of the tcp/ip item to see your DNS setting.

I don't know how to do this. I used Start/network and got my router
and my computer, but that's the place, right?

It's usually provided by your ISP. A better option is to
use OpenNIC

107.170.95.180 (NY, US)
104.237.144.172 (NJ, US)
75.127.14.107 (NY, US)

or OpenDNS

I didn't understand this or OpenNIC.

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

You can look up your current DNS server
IP here, if you think it might be suspicious:

http://www.ip-adress.com/whois/

This page doesn't insist on a www prefix, so I put in

acmesupply.net and www.acmesupply.net and the results are exactly the
same, as they should be.

It's my friend and one email address is obsolete afaik, but the other
two are almost surely good. It's got his personal name and it
describes at length his business. He's not renting from anyone.

It says
clientTransferProhibited
http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

And it doesn't expire for another year.
......

Personally I'd be most suspicious about a
plugin, because that can edit the page you
see, while a DNS server can only change
where you end up when you enter xyz.net.
But, again, this is grasping at straws without
knowing the details.

| That may be because the Google links are not actually
| to the website. Showing a visited link color depends on
| the webpage and your browser history. So when you
|
| I figured if it has the color that means it's been visited, the page
| is in the (firefox, say) cache. And that if you purge the cache, as
| they sometimes suggest doing, there will be no indication you've been
| anywhere. (and I like knowing because sometimes I want go to a page
| I've already been to, and sometimes I want a new page.
|

Yes, but Google is proxying through their own site. You're
never actually navigating directly to the target site:
www.google.com/q=whereYouReallyWantToGo.com

I thought that might prevent the site registering as
visited at DDG, because you never clicked on a link
to whereYouReallyWantToGo.com.

| go to DDG your browser may not see those links as
| visited because they're not Google links. I know DDG
| doesn't block a visited color because I see them.
|
| The last sentence, I don't understand at all.
|
As you said, visited links are saved by the browser
and normally the browser will show the visited link
color for those sites, but it can also be changed in
the webpage. CSS can be used to make the active
link and visited link color the same. That's not unusual.
In that case you'd have to view the page without
styles to see the visited color. But I know DDG is
not doing that because I see visited links colored
differently at DDG.

| He hasn't complained about that exactly, but he has complained that if
| a generic search is done, for supply, he doesn't come up anywhere near
| the top. He may have even paid to get himself higher, but his
| competitors are paying too. And alphabetically, his company doesn't
| start with A, like Acme does. It's much closer to the end of the
| alphabet, even though it's a good name -- notice how many other supply
| companies had similar names.
|
I don't think it helps much to pay. SEO is, to a large
extent, a flim flam operation. It helps to have frequent
page updates and to have lots of incoming links. It also
helps to be well established. But if there are a lot of
businesses in the same field it will be difficult to break in.

Also, SEO tricks can often downgrade one's rating. My
dentist hired a webpage designer who listed just about every
town in E. MA in the META tags. That's likely to hurt rather
than help. If Google sniffs SEO tricks they'll punish for it.

I did a website for a plumber a couple of years ago. He
was already #1 or #2 when I searched for a plumber
with his city name, but his site was junky. Meanwhile, his
web host talked him into getting a second site to improve his
ratings. The plumber made the second site with drag/drop
online, using mostly the same content as the first site. He
wouldn't listen to my warning, figuring that the college kid
making $7/hour doing tech support at the webhost was an
expert, and I wasn't. The result was that his first website
went down in the rankings. Google considers it a cheat when
you put the same content on multiple sites.

If your friend wants to increase traffic, the best bet would
be to do "link trades" with relevant trade groups or other sites
that make sense. For instance, the Chamber of Commerce
probably takes part in such link trades. He might also advertise
on Yelp and ask people to write reviews. Yelp and others have
been repeatedly accused of favoring companies that pay for
ads. I have no doubt that's true. I, myself, have been called
repeatedly by a contractor review site for builders. After
they explained the deal I realized that what they were really
talking about was ads, not listings and reviews. I'd pay a few
hundred dollars to be a member and I'd pay them a fee for
referrals. But the public facing company advertises a dependable
way to find trustworthy contractors.
In general I wouldn't put much faith in online reviews or
recommendations. Especially if the site is free to use. If the
visitor is not paying for advice then the reviewed companies
are almost certainly paying for rigged ratings. In that sense,
something like Yelp is a mixed blessing. But a lot of people use
it.

I don't think the first letter of the company will affect much
of anything.

| I should use my HOSTS file more. Frames? Frames on webpages? I
| havent' seen them for a long time.
|

Blocking frames is the only way to block iframes.
Fortunately, most sites no longer use frames. But
iframes have become very common. An iframe is
a webpage embedded in a webpage. But it doesn't
have to have a border or a scrollbar. On a typical
commercial page there may be 10 iframes. Google/
Doubleclick uses them for ads. Facebook uses them
for Like buttons. By putting their image in an iframe
it looks the same, but technically you've visited their
website. That allows them to run script and set
first-party cookies. One of the worst browser
vulnerabilities, cross site scripting, is typically done
through iframes. Criminals hack a vulnerable site, such
as a site made with Wordpress, and insert an iframe
to load something from their malware site. They then
run script from the malware site to do a driveby download.
At one point there was wide agreement
that iframes should be phased out. But then came
the spyware and high functionality of "Web 2.0". Now
iframes are very common.

In any Mozilla browser you can set browser.frames.enabled
to False in order to prevent loading external tracking and
many ads. But it will break a few pages. I find it works
best to use two browsers: One has NoScript and allows
session cookies, frames, etc. The other, which I use most
of the time, is optimized for privacy and security. No referrer,
no iframes, no script, no cookies, no supper cookies, etc.


| Years ago I was having trouble using Facebook search**, and I thought
| maybe it's because I wasn't registered, so I registered but told them
| nothing about myself, including my real name. Then my young niece had
| a page and she asked me to be a friend and I said okay if I can use a
| phony name. But then I started using my Facebook account in place of
| registering. Does that mean she gets spam from every website I sign
| into using my Facebook account?
|

I don't know much about that, other than what I read.
I think it means that if you buy kinky lingerie your niece
might get a message saying that you liked Acme Panties,
which has their new crotchless line on sale.

One thing's for sure -- if Zuck finds out that you didn't
use your real name you may be drawn and quartered for
the crime of "misrepresenting yourself in such a way as
to reduce the profits of advertisers." On Facebook, your
friends *are* the advertisers. (Czar Cheryl Sandberg says
so, recasting them as "brands", which she has the nerve
to cast as a category of friend:

Facebook "enables brands to find their voices. and to have genuine,
personal relationships with their customers" ..."to make marketing
truly social".

Who needs professional integrity when you've got
Orwellian psychosis helping to increase profits?


|
| The one in windows\system32\drivers\etc has only two lines:
| 127.0.0.1 localhost
| ::1 localhost
|

See here for info and a starter kit:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/privacytips.php5#hosts

You can also just write your own HOSTS file, and
there are other samples online. The only reason to
start with someone else's HOSTS file is to get the
list of common advertisers and trackers to block.


| In network settings, select
| the Properties of the tcp/ip item to see your DNS setting.
|
| I don't know how to do this. I used Start/network and got my router
| and my computer, but that's the place, right?
|
Control Panel - Network _ local area
connection (probably) - Properties.
Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). There
may also be an IPv6 entry. Click Properties.
Somewhere there you should see your
DNS server IP address(es).

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015 21:04:28 -0800, "Bob F"
wrote:

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:27:31 -0800, "Bob F"
wrote:

Micky wrote:
On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:02:05 -0500, Micky
wrote:

In IE, I googled the business of a friend of mine, to get his work
phone number.

First came two paid ads, which varied.

Let me try to be more clear.

Then the next entry was of the form acmesupply.net and it was a
^^^^^^^

The entry was "of the form" acmesupply.net. http://acmesupply.net

My friend's url is of the form http://www.acmesupply.net

If someone is www.name.net , is it permitted for someone else to
have name.net?

His url is about his trade and his business, which has nothing to do
with sneakers.

I'm not going to post my friend's url without discussing it with him
first, and the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


page that sold fancy sneakers. They have an enormous selection,
many brands, almost all between 86 and 90 a pair. Yet the google
entry had my friend's businsess's suburban town, zipcode, and
phone number.

....

If I tell him about this, will he be able to get the shoe site to
change its url? It sort of looks like he is selling sneakers,
which makes his very professional business look amateurish. OTOH,
will the average google user really think the page is his?

Should I tell him about this?

Is there any reason you would not?

What I just said:
....the question is whether there is any point to telling him
about this at all. It will just annoy him to know about this if it
can't be changed.

He works 50 hours a week or more, is always on call, and he has plenty
of annoyances already: customers who don't pay (although he can tell
that the recession is almost over because many more customers are
paying), impossible to find enough qualified staff, even though he
pays a good salary and benefits including sick and vacation days and
health insurance (he's not big enough to covered by the law that says
he has to, but he still has for more than 10 years), not actually
making a profit some years but holding out for better years, etc. He
doesn't need another annoyance unless it's something that can be
solved.

And even then maybe the time to solve it would be more than it's
worth, if this page isn't actually costing him business. I don't
know what the average googler thinks if he sees it ??, and if he goes
to the next 6 hits which are all for my friend's business.

If someone is selling things from "his" site, and maybe just taking the money
and never shipping anything, your "friend" might want to know. He'll get the
complaints.

True, but my best guess right now is that this is some sort of
google.com fluke. When I enter acmesupply.net directly, even
without the www, I get my friend's page.

When I search for acme supply baltimore and get a hit whose
summary is all about sneakers but which it says is named
acmesupply.net, and I click on it, I get that page about sneakers but
every page that links from it, like Help, Contact Us, Register, has a
totally different domain, one with a name that a sneaker store would
likely have. I'm sure they're sellling sneakers but I'm also sure
people have to buy and checkout via that domain.

Yes, there seems to be no way to buy sneakers while remaining on the
only page with my friend's page's name. The moment I do anything, I"m
on a page that has the other name. WRITTEN LAST, MY CONCLUSION.


Which makes this hypothetical. (but thanks for making me check it out
more!) But say they screw up some orders, you're right that if they
still remember to google the name in those three words, they'll see
his POB, suburban town, and phone number, and they might well call
him, and he won't know what they're talking about. I think most
people won't go back to google.com but will go to the webpage they've
been dealing with, that they saved as a bookmark, that's a link on
invoice they get.

I'll check out reviews of the site. (This took me a day.) Okay....
it doesn't do too well on reviews, though sometimes reviews are
unnecesarily suspicious. Indeed the site is scamadviser and there
are at least 5 pages accusing scamadviser of being a scam, well at
least of claiming good sites are scams!! "this website is calling our
website dangerous just because we have registered it in singapore and
updating it from New Zealand. Are you kidding me? We are a verified
business by Norton and have tons of proper information including our
company's registration number on our website. It's an awkward rating
website like MyWOT." And "ScamAdviser.com is worst than a scam, they
use misleading, abuse and offensive title on search engine to damage
other legit online businesses and push them to hopeless. Why I say
that:"
http://www.complaintsboard.com/compl...s-c631201.html

But most of these people like it,
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...6003800AA87S7A

Scamadviser is the only hit that negatively rates the sneaker site,
and it does so not because of complaints.


But I have already copied in what it says: "Low Trust Rating. This
Site May Not Be Safe to Use. Site is Seychelles based , but most
likely from China...

Registered contact email address is a free one
[Alert Result] Technical contact email address is a free one
[Alert Result] Administrative contact email address is a free one
[Alert Result] High Number Of Suspicous Websites On This Server (check
the server tab)
[Alert Result] This registrar is used by a high % of spammers and
fraud sites
[Alert Result] This Site Maybe Linked With Other Risky Sites
[Alert Result] This website is 19 Days old
[Alert Result] The website expected life (366 days) is relatively
short.
[Alert Result] The website appears to be less than six months old
[Alert Result] This website setup involves countries known to be high
risk
[Alert Result] This website is likely to be operating from a high risk
country
Analysis Details:-
This webite is very new , and as such doesn't have an online
reputation yet. As with all new businesses , we suggest that you take
care and if necessary get in contact with the owners before placing an
order of value.
This site has a high risk country associated with it. This may be as
you expect but care should be taken if purchasing an item from a site
that you didn't expect to be associated with the countries listed
above. Certain countries are listed as being high risk because of the
high percentage of online fraud or tendency to send fake/replica
items.

Free email addresses have been used in the setup of this website. This
is not necesarily worrying, depending on the site. For online shops,
this can be a sign that the site has some risk

The website has been newly registered with a short life expectancy,
which follows the pattern used by many fraudulent and fake selling
websites. Please be vigilant and take extra care before providing any
payment information. "


All in all I think there is a flaw in Google's creation of its long
complicated url and the way google redirects from the url of its
creation