Watch out for those sample URLs

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Eric Lippert — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:09:00 GMT

Yes, you must keep on top of owning it. The script team used to use "scripthappens.com" for our sample url, which we owned. But when the name ownership expired we didn't jump on it fast enough and sure enough, it's been a porn site ever since.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Kim Gräsman — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:14:00 GMT

We always used mydomain.com, with the effect that the actual owners of mydomain.com started registering all of our company name's top-level domains (.co.uk, etc).

I changed to example.com a while ago, so as not to make any more enemies ;)

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Panos Theofanopoulos — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:15:00 GMT

if i click

http://http://www.example.com/

(using firefox) goes to microsoft ;)

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Rob — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:23:00 GMT

You get the same result just typing http into Firefox - it looks like typing something other than a URL into the location bar is equivalent to going to Google, typing in the search string and pressing "I'm Feeling Lucky".

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Roy Dictus — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:25:00 GMT

Another good one is http://www.something.com. Try it, it works ;-)

Roy

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Kyle Benefiel — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:40:00 GMT

This was a problem when UBIsoft released Rainbow Six 3.
"Texan Tony Ashcraft was one of the early buyers of the game and noted the URL as he played. Thinking the link might feature ancillary information on the game, he told me he typed it into his browser, only to find no one owned the domain. On Nov. 22, he bought it and immediately filled it with porn links. "

See http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/05/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/ for the entire story.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Yann — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:41:00 GMT

In a typing course, my domain name qwerty.nl was used as an example. I started to receive a dozen of e-mails to someuser@qwerty.nl every few days, all with the same excercise text. Finally I got tired of it and asked the publisher of the course to change it to example.nl. dot-nl, instead of dot-com. My mistake... I hope the owner of example.nl isnt bothered too much by it.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Alex J. — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:48:00 GMT

In the Bahamas, the Batelco used an image of a web browser on the cover of the phone book. The web browser featured the url www.xxx.com. It only came to the attention of the phone company that this was a porn site after all of the books had been distributed. The Bahamas is a religous country, at least in public, so the phone company recalled all of the phone books. The returned them to the public after having marked through all of the porn urls with a black magic marker. :)

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Larry Osterman — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:54:00 GMT

Wierd. On my machine, http://www.example.com goes to

"You have reached this web page by typing "example.com", "example.net", or "example.org" into your web browser. These domains are reserved for documentation....."

Maybe you typed http://http://www.example.com?

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Cooney — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:58:00 GMT

> Yes, you must keep on top of owning it.

Definitely - the next time MS fails to renew hotmail or expedia or something, it might not be a nice geek that notices first. It might be that porn link guy.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

J. Peterson — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 15:16:00 GMT

Reminds me of a corporate web site done by a consultant years ago ('96?). There were numerous places where the consultant needed dummy URLs so she filled in "http://xxx" thinking it would just produce an error. Well, it turns out the browser of that vintage "helpfully" re-wrote the URL as "http://www.xxx.com/" much to the dismay of her client...

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Christian — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:00:00 GMT

In Germany once C&A gave away T-Shirts
written canda.boys.com on it. I think
it was a marketing idea to write something
looking like internet for the brand "canda boys" of C&A.

Guess what *.boys.com resolved to ;-)

They recalled the free T-Shirts.

Another thing:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/10224

Microsoft bought
Dot-in-the-dot.com, dot-in-the-dot-com.org, dot-in-the-dot-com.net, dot-in-the-dot-com.com, dot-in-the-dot.net, dot-in-the-dot.org, dot-truth.org und dot-truth.net.

Raymond, any idea which department did that?
marketing, developer-geeks?

They seem to be not connected at the moment

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Neilcar — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:19:00 GMT

You also have to be careful of other things. When Win2k launched, the DNS server had an event log message that used bar.com & foo.bar.com as examples. I had a customer complain to me about the unprofessionalism of this, and I really had to agree with the point.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Carmen — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:58:00 GMT

Yes, because professionalism means no sense of humor.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Jason — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 18:13:00 GMT

We once had a vendor come in to install their product. After the install, he followed the instructions exactly as they were in his notes. He was surprised when http://servername didn't work. ;)

--jason

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Dan — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 18:42:00 GMT

Another example: a friend of mine owns "corp.com" which was used, I believe, as the default in an old version of FrontPage. He had a revolving set of places he sent them, including some that were of an adult nature.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Thierry Tremblay — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:00:00 GMT

A coworker of mine wanted to show me the bus transit's web site in Montreal. The company's name used to be "C.T.C.U.M." but everyone simply called it the "C.U.M.".

So she entered "www.cum.com" in the browser... I had a good laugh when I saw her reaction!

I Second That, Raymond!

15Seconds WebLog — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 22:30:00 GMT

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Jack Tripper — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:02:00 GMT

RFC2606 says that www.invalid.* is reserved.

But none of them are. What's up with that.

BTW, If you own
.spam
.qwerty
.servername
.nowhere
.nobody
.qwerty
.foo
etc

then you deserve the spam you get. You knew it wasn't a valid entity name when you registered it.

If you are Billy Bob, then you register BillyBob.com, not foobar.com or haha.com

And email addresses

Steve Loughran — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:23:00 GMT

I always wonder if there is a "somebody@microsoft.com", that being the example email address in outlook express. If there is, they must get a lot of spoofed mail.

I Second That, Raymond!

15Seconds WebLog — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:40:00 GMT

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Christian — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 21:24:00 GMT

somebody@microsoft should be routed to Erika Wikkers from .NET-Tv (or how is her name spelled) ;-)

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Jon Potter — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 22:43:00 GMT

I'd like to know how much spam billg@microsoft.com gets :)

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

asdf — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 01:05:00 GMT

I'd imagine a lot less than asdf@asdf.com

Example Web Page

constructive nonconformist — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 06:11:00 GMT

Advice from Raymond Chen: Watch out for those sample URLs Example Web Page

re: invalid and RFC 2606

Adam Fitzpatrick — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:28:00 GMT

RFC 2606 says that invalid is a reserved *top level* domain. What the RFC is saying is that, for example, somethingsilly.invalid will never be available for registration.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Phil — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 21:27:00 GMT

Does the URL have to be real? If not, you could use http://tempuri.org.

re: Watch out for those sample URLs

Raymond Chen — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:02:00 GMT

What makes you say it isn't real? It works for me.

Why do I see the same fake names in Microsoft samples over and over?

The Old New Thing — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:00:15 GMT

There is a stock collection of fake names.