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OK, so I got bored today and added an innocent line into Someone's hosts file...
   xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx www.facebook.com
which very innocently (and quietly) displays www.facebock.co.ukFace bock (bock)...

Watching Someone's face as they tried to get round it rather than go cold-turkey was immensly funny.

I know I'm gonna pay for this at some point, but it was worth it!

Screenshot of facebock.co.uk (RIP)


Update (10-Sep-08): And now it looks like I'm paying for it through the vigilante nature of a company called MarkMonitor, who I've never heard of before, but who somehow have the power to shutdown websites they don't like by literally lying about the content of said websites and hoping the service provider they contact isn't going to check what MarkMonitor say. More to come once this is all over...

Update (15-Sep-08): If you have a policy in place to block Facebook, but would rather do it in a more fun way, then just copy the complete HTML code from the Facebook parody (www.facebock.co.uk) and drop it onto your own server, setting up the appropriate host headers to pick up www.facebook.com. [If you want the code, let me know via my Contact page]

Update (17-Sep-08): Starting to write up The Vigilante, The American Idiots & The Geek... In the meantime, I will leave www.parody1.co.uk/facebook available so you can make up your own mind, but redirect everything else to this post. Suprise suprise, big American companies often stick together and don't like being challenged when they make mistakes. Others did suprise me, and had competent technical staff willing and able to give a second (correct) opinion, but MarkMonitor and 1&1 have their fictional statistic now and that's all they're interested in (especially when one is such a big customer of the other).

Update (16-Oct-08): By coincidence, Richard Clayton over at Light Blue Touchpaper has a writeup about how these antiphishing companies aren't sharing data between each other, so when a real phishing website is found by one AP company, then they ignore it if they aren't being paid by the related bank or organisation.

I guess this means that Facebook are paying MarkMonitor a lot of money, and probably per site that they get shut down; therefore it is in MarkMonitor's interest to lie about a website if they know it will add to their statistics with little threat of them being challenged.

Richard Clayton's article mentions a 2-5 day delay on trying to shut down phishing sites due to the lack of data sharing; it took MarkMonitor well over 12 Months to contact anyone about Facebock while 300 innocent people every day (for the past 6+ months) had been hitting the site! Either that suggests MarkMonitor are very bad at their job, or maybe that they needed a bit of extra cash off Facebook last month.

Update (19-Feb-09): Well, that was fun for a while...
... but seeing as 1&1 aren't interested in small customers (some of their support teams are about as good at replying as Symantec's!) I think I'm gonna say "Thanks for all the fish" and put this tedious saga behind me.

It was fun while it lasted and made me a bit of AdSense cash over the past 6 months (well, it covered the cost of the hosting and a couple of pints anyway). But seeing as Google appears to have dropped the facebock.co.uk domain from its index there's no real point in keeping going what was originally a 15 minute joke back in July 2007 to stop "Someone" from getting to Facebook and was completely forgotten about until September 2008, when it all blew up in my face.

The comedy/frustration surrounding the technically incompetent people at MarkMonitor who decided Facebock was a phishing site*, seemed worth fighting back in September/October, but I'd kinda forgotten about it all until I spotted the stats drop off over the past coupla weeks from their usual 400 a day down to <40.

* check the Wayback machine and if the site is still there, it's obvious to any competent person that this site could not phish anything unless login.facebook.com happened to have been DNS poisoned in which case all Facebook logins would be phished including those from the normal site!

Update (10-Dec-09): In the end I decided not to give in to harassment back in February; instead I transferred the domain over to Freeparking.co.uk (Fibranet) and made them aware of the history of the domain. They seemed happy to take my money and had no qualms about what I had told them about Markmonitor.

Things changed in October when Freeparking (Fibranet) shut the domain off without any warning and then proceeded to completely ignore any support tickets that I raised in relation to the problem for the next two months. Finally I'd had enough and decided to transfer the domain back to 1&1* and point it at this page for the foreseeable future.

It was at this point that Freeparking support finally responded to a request to change the IPS tag with a very curt message: "Hi Your domain was archived some time ago, and will shortly be deleted by the central UK registry as it is quite clearly either passing off or a phishing site. Your details have been passed to the relevant authorities. cheers paul"; so I very calmly used Nominet's system to change the IPS tag instead.

Funnily enough Nominet have no record on their system of any deletion, I still have full control over the domain, and Freeparking (Fibranet) have still to tell me who these generic "relevant authorities" are. I am looking forward to explaining to these "authorities" just how bad Markmonitor's system of alleging a problem and scaring service providers into instantly shutting down domains with no oversight or response procedure is.

* just because they at least have a phone number where you can talk to a real person

By on July 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comment


Reader Comments

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July 19, 2007, (no name) says:

"I know I'm gonna pay for this at some point" - Yeah you got that right man... :| LOL
   From 'Someone'...

December 10, 2009, Theo Gray says:

Anyone who may be interested in purchasing the facebock.co.uk domain name, please let me know via my Contact page as I have no further ideas for it right now.

January 21, 2010, Matthias Nosegbe says:

Hi to everyone

January 23, 2010, roberto diaz says:

hola

January 25, 2010, mariana says:

hello!!

February 22, 2010, Ivan says:

Ivan say hi to the all facebock member

March 9, 2010, karolima says:

hola les deceo un buen dia

March 10, 2010, abbas says:

hello

March 18, 2010, Arturo says:

Muy bien

March 18, 2010, Arturo says:

Hola

March 24, 2010, Maria Marquez says:

Holaaaa

March 27, 2010, oseidelin says:

hola quiero tener nuevos amigos

March 31, 2010, maria andrea says:

hola q fulllllllllllllll la pagina

April 1, 2010, jean paoul says:

heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

April 1, 2010, kamila saguay espinoza says:

quiero tener amigos facebock

April 11, 2010, omar says:

hye cava tous

April 29, 2010, enzo says:

hola a todo el mundo

May 9, 2010, wilter javier chivata pardo says:

hola

May 12, 2010, luis tejada says:

hello

May 13, 2010, maykel woloks Nts says:

Hallow

May 15, 2010, adriano says:

ola

May 25, 2010, rubielita says:

holaaaaa

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hola

June 8, 2010, yorbelis says:

hola

June 25, 2010, katy says:

katy..

June 27, 2010, alejandra says:

i don't like avatar is boring for me

July 4, 2010, roger says:

hola ha todos

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hhhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

July 6, 2010, kim says:

hi

July 16, 2010, DIANA says:

hola

July 24, 2010, matias says:

hola soy de urugyay

August 6, 2010, reda says:

ciaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

August 31, 2010, MEHDI says:

HOLA

September 8, 2010, moufida says:

I'm MOUFIDA

September 8, 2010, moufida says:

toujour

September 23, 2010, karla lorena says:

Karla y ????

September 27, 2010, ... says:

hi people...

October 7, 2010, KARLA M says:

HOLA HOLA COMO STAN...

October 10, 2010, jose says:

olaaaa

October 15, 2010, ouchrne karim says:

salut

October 29, 2010, tarik says:

salut ca va tout le monde

October 29, 2010, rosmy says:

hello

November 30, 2010, simo says:

hoi

January 6, 2011, salahpop says:

hi
hi diana

January 6, 2011, salahpop says:

i love egypt

January 8, 2011, moosa jat says:

sweet home

February 2, 2011, monir hqssan says:

rosmsy says,hi to everyone hello,ivan say hi to the all facebook member

February 21, 2011, iliana perla says:

Hola,quiero tener amigos en facebock

February 22, 2011, katerene lorena cabrera says:

ola...........viva el face.....

March 24, 2011, youssef says:

hi

March 24, 2011, youssef says:

how are you diana

April 1, 2011, noorulamin says:

salam

April 8, 2011, RAUL says:

holas
vienen

April 11, 2011, Doroteo says:

Hola

April 15, 2011, yelsin alejo bravo says:

ola kisiera tener amigos en facebok de todo el mundo vale

April 19, 2011, Areej says:

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

April 20, 2011, VANESSA says:

hola deceo conocer amigas d todas partes

April 26, 2011, jose says:

hola me gustaria tener amigas de todo el mundo

May 2, 2011, javier says:

que onda amigos de chihuahua

May 2, 2011, Shamsul haque says:

Will u be my fen ?

May 13, 2011, abu mshary says:

hello to everyone I will not forget you for ever

June 10, 2011, jose says:

hola. me gustaria tener amigas x este medio

July 9, 2011, Ani says:

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

September 20, 2011, kalkidan says:

this good idea

November 17, 2011, gamal kumar says:

hi every body

November 25, 2011, charan yadav says:

hi any body how r u

December 13, 2011, CRISTIAN CASTILLO says:

QE ONDA BATOS

January 8, 2012, jose cruz says:

Quiero amigas en Facebook

February 5, 2012, zohair ahmadi says:

salam

February 8, 2012, jose alfredo da silva says:

hi all want to make a friends,what can i do to be it possible?

February 24, 2012, Mohd azad says:

Sorav is very good friends please a call me

April 1, 2012, Himanshu says:

Hello brijendera

August 9, 2012, Rathan says:

Hi to every one

August 11, 2012, luis says:

hola

December 9, 2012, koko says:

END OF WORLD!!!!!

September 30, 2013, Hamoudlailahassoun says:

Hello


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