Last Updated on April 14, 2017 by Dave Farquhar
There’s a good, featury story at Salon about lapsed domain names and speculation as to why. Good read, especially for those of you (and you know who you are) who enjoy typing weird stuff into a Web browser to see what will happen.
Like Gatermann, for example, who likes to type things like www.goatmilk.com and see what comes up (these days, nothing), then goes and changes the hosts file on another friend’s computer to keep his little brother from visiting his favorite Web sites.
I’ll never forget the time Gatermann typed www.hotmonkeylove.com into a Web browser. Up popped a big picture of Henry Kissinger picking his nose. The only text on the page said, “E-mail me if you have any ideas about what to do with this site.” We should have cliked on the link and said, “I recommend you visit IRegisteredADumbDomainNameAndNowWhatShouldIDo.com.” But we didn’t. And by the time we got around to redirecting another site to that page via the hosts file, it had lapsed.
We were probably the only people who missed it. And I’m not sure I know why.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
But one of the funniest sites to direct and keep your friends younger sibilings from looking at their favorite pages is http://www.smurf.com . I can imagine what their faces look like when that pops up and they were expecting something else…