WARNING - Skenzo redirecting some parked domains to malicious URLs!!!

[ebess]

Like most of you, I own a lot of domains which are parked at various companies. And I'm guessing that many of you are like me and don't regularly VISIT your domains which are parked to 'check in on them'. If you are parking with Skenzo CHECK YOUR DOMAINS NOW!

Imagine my horror when I went to one of my Skenzo parked domains, prior to contacting potential buyers, to see what they were showing as the parked page, only to have my domain redirect me to a malicious site with popups that completely hijacked Safari!! AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR OR HOW MANY OTHER DOMAINS OF MINE THEY ARE DOING THIS WITH (I'm checking them by hand right now and have already come across several other Skenzo parked domains of mine that are redirecting to malicious websites)!!

Attempting to get anyone from Skenzo on the phone was absolutely impossible - each extension for every rep I'd ever worked with over the MANY years I've been parking with Skenzo resulted in my either being disconnected or told that the person at the extension that you are trying to reach is unavailable and I should send an email.

Well I did send an email to [email protected], and I cc'd everyone I'd ever been in contact with regarding my Skenzo account. Let's see if and when I hear back from them and just what they have to say regarding this issue which could drastically hurt the reputation of some of my domains.

Before I continue with my checking of all my "Skenzo parked domains", I figured I'd post the warning on here so those of you also parking with Skenzo could see if any of your domain names were affected.

In order to prove what's happening, I am forced to leave the sites with the problem at Skenzo -- what would you guys do in my situation?? Has anyone ever heard of this happening before?? Is anyone else parked at Skenzo having this problem? What legal recourse do I have here?

I have been in domaining since 1996 and have NEVER experienced anything even remotely like this. I am livid and shocked and flat out not sure even what I should do next (other than continue checking to find out which other of my Skenzo parked domains are also redirecting to malicious sites).

Any guidance would be tremendously appreciated!!!

Also, please chime in if you have been affected by this despicable redirecting of parked domains to malicious sites!

I'm going to go throw up now...

 

[dannyinpt]

I would suggest taking a screenshot of each domain that has an issue, then changing the nameservers to another parking company. Then continue to ask questions and find out how this happened. I use several parking companies but thankfully not them.

Good luck I hope you and they get it sorted.

 

[ebess]

Thanks dannyinpt!! Unfortunately I was stupidly being 1) benevolent in taking the time to post warnings for other domainers before having had the chance to check the entirety of my portfolio that has been parked with Skenzo for coming up on a decade; and 2) naive in emailing a furious letter to Skenzo about the issue before I'd documented it fully.

Sure enough, minutes emailing Skenzo and then posting here the 5 of 7 parked domains that I'd had a chance to check which were all redirecting to malicious sites "miraculously" started landing on innocuous standard parking landers (unfortunately I didn't have time to check more between the time I emailed Skenzo, posted here, and then started checking...) I checked a few more and saw that some were still redirecting to malicious sites, so I researched what was the best screencast recorder for Mac, spent $99 on ScreenFlow so that I could document that the domains were redirecting to these malicious sites on video even if they tried to cover up the evidence later...and of course by the time I'd done that and set the software up to record, all of a sudden everything was clean as a whistle, all sites operating as if nothing untoward had ever been going on.

I am such a fool for not documenting everything FIRST. Let that be a lesson to any other Skenzo domainers that find themselves in a similar situation.

In the meantime, they have now lost the business and respect of someone who has been doing business with them for almost 10 years.

What parking company do you guys suggest I switch to now? These are my mainstream domains that I am looking to move (the adult portfolio is parked elsewhere)

And if you are a parking company, feel free to PM me...

 

[Hypersot]

If I'm not mistaken, that's called 'zero-click' and it's been used by most (if not all) of the parking companies out there

I find it really strange that you haven't encountered this all the way since 1996. Even SEDO uses zeroclick.

When you park a domain the parking companies try to maximize your profits by trying various 'ways', zero-click i s one of those ways.

Normally, you should be able to opt-out of this but, since I don't park my domains with skenzo, I wouldn't know if they have that option

 

[forge]

Yeah I mentioned zero-click in OP's other thread.

Zero-click didn't exist in '96. I doubt parking did as we know it.

 

[forge]

It would be interesting, to me, to get a (brief) historical overview of domain parking, at least its origins.

But getting off topic here.

 

[ebess]

@Hypersot, I don't think you're understanding what I'm upset about.

I don't care about a parking company's use of 'zero-click'.

I very much DO care about my parked domains redirecting visitors to malicious sites that hijack their web browser & try to scam them out of money!

On my Mac, I had to do a force quit, and when I relaunched Safari the webpage automatically loaded itself again (despite my Safari preferences set to open to a blank window), giving me no option but to force quit again. Rinse and repeat. Was starting to get SUPER nervous as this cycle happened over and over (even though I'd deleted the site from my history) because it's not like you can uninstall Safari and reinstall it - it's baked into OS X. Luckily, Safari was smart enough to eventually pop up a prompt essentially saying "You've been repeatedly crashing, perhaps there's something wrong with one of the websites you were visiting - would you like to not open the windows from the previous session?" YES, PLEASE!

Not only do these sites hijack visitors' web browsers, but they also try to trick them into thinking their computer is infected with a virus (which is why their browser is all jacked up) and that they need to call such and such phone number to pay to have them remove the virus. TOTAL SCAM.

So yes, a parking company redirecting to such a malicious site is most definitely not something I've ever seen before in all my years of domaining. And if you doubt how long I've been doing this for, take a look at the creation dates for some of the domains in my sig.

@forge - I don't know when the first parking company popped up, but I wasn't aware of any back in '96. I just used affiliate links on domains where it was appropriate and had the rest redirect to a single "For Sale" landing page.

BTW, Skenzo finally emailed me with apologies, claiming that these 'advertisers' must have slipped past their compliance team. They have turned off zero click for my account while "they are performing their investigation." I have yet to make up my mind whether they were genuinely surprised to learn about this or whether they were complicit until caught...

 

[Hypersot]

@Hypersot, I don't think you're understanding what I'm upset about.

I don't care about a parking company's use of 'zero-click'.

I understand that you're upset and you're very right to be so. What I'm saying is that, some zero-click redirects lead to malware infested sites.

I have complained in the past about it on a couple of parking companies I use but they responded ignorance so I ended up requesting an opt-out since it was obvious they didn't want to admit it (despite sending them clear screenshots, URLs, etc.)

 

[ebess]

I understand that you're upset and you're very right to be so. What I'm saying is that, some zero-click redirects lead to malware infested sites.

I have complained in the past about it on a couple of parking companies I use but they responded ignorance so I ended up requesting an opt-out since it was obvious they didn't want to admit it (despite sending them clear screenshots, URLs, etc.)

Thanks for the clarification. So sorry to hear you experienced the same reputation damaging misuse of your parked domains!

Could you share with us which other parking companies were pulling this crap with you and feigning ignorance? It would be useful to all of us to know which parking companies to avoid -- or at a bare minimum which ones to make sure to opt-out of their zero-click. Obviously, we already know Skenzo is on the list.

Also, if this ever happens again unfortunately I don't think screenshots will be enough... thanks to this debacle, I've got myself some good screencast recording software now and I'm damn sure going to use it to document any and all misuse of my domains by a parking company FIRST, complain to them second, and then post here to warn others third.

I'd recommend others who encounter create screencast recordings that definitively show the actual process of typing the domain into the browser and seeing all of the crazy redirects it goes through before it finally dumps you at a malicious site. Timestamped recordings are hard to dispute.

 

[Hypersot]

I'd prefer not to name them. Reason of doing so is that, I believe the problem is not the companies themselves as much as zero-click.

I mean, as I mentioned earlier, even SEDO uses zero-click (or used to, I don't use them for parking anymore).

It's been also a few times in the past that my parked pages ended redirecting to various 'odd' (to say the least) sites that had nothing to do with the niches my domains belong to. I won't even mention how many times I've seen porn redirections on said domains

Also, don't forget that there is no 'inquiry' button on zero-click pages which makes it even worse.

Solution is simple, just opt-out for the domains you have for sale and it's done. What I do is, I don't use zero-click on 'for sale only' domains while I do use it on the parked pages I have only for parking income

 

[ebess]

I understand your reasoning for not wanting to call out the parking companies with whom you've experienced this problem, but I'm disappointed nonetheless.

That said, your advice about opting out of zero-click on any domain you ever remotely think you might ever want to sell is spot on. It's just not worth the risk -- whether or not the parking companies are being truthful about their ignorance, the damage is already done.

 

[n0d]

i know this is kind of an old thread but relevant to what I need help on pertaining to a possible future client;

what nameservers are the official nameservers for skenzo?

is this okay to ask?