- hop.to = 216.27.94.80
- Has no reverse DNS (for me nor for SamSpade.org).
- The .to TLD is supposed to be for Tonga.
- According to IANA (
http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm), the .to
TLD is handled by
http://www.iana.org/root-whois/to.htm but registration
services are provided at
http://www.tonic.to/. Their
http://www.tonic.to/faq.htm?4480DF43;;;#10 says they are in San Quentin,
CA (USA). Tonic.to's IP address is 206.184.59.10 is in the range owned
by Verio whose registration data says they are in Colorado, USA. So
much for obeying the .to TLD to mean the country of Tonga. Tonic.to
does *NOT* provide a WhoIs lookup of domain registrant information.
Blind or hidden registrations qualify for spam and fraud filtering.
- dig shows the nameservers for hop.to are at ampira.com. WhoIs shows
this is owned by FortuneCity whose registration data says they are in
New York, USA. FortuneCity is also mentioned in extreme minimal
registration data in ARIN lookup on hop.to's IP address.
So Roady, who appears to be using an e-mail address at .nl
(Netherlands), is using a URL redirection service at hop.to (to a user
account at chello.nl) which is NOT in Tonga but is registered through a
registrar in San Quentin who does NOT provide any WhoIs information that
goes through a FortuneCity nameserver in Colorado and who inserts
invisible frames to run scripts to open popups for ads by FortuneCity in
New York. While the chello.nl domain might be okay (I haven't
investigate that ... yet), hop.to is NOT. Hop.to is listed in some
DNSBL (DNS blacklists) because they are abused as a spam source
regardless of Tonic.to's claim to eliminate spammers after receiving
complaints.
Using SamSpade's safe web browser (to see the HTML code only), Roady's
is using a URL redirection service that spews spam. Having <FRAME
src="
http://images.v3.com/popclkjscript.htm" name="adpage"> (v3.com is
also FortuneCity) to show popups probably won't be tolerated by many
users, anymore. Banners are bad enough. Popups are now intolerable.
So you navigate through hop.to which then uses frames to show the target
web site but also uses frames to popup ads. Why? Because hop.to is
free? There are no other URL redirection services that don't use this
scummy approach?
Roady won't be able to get rid of the spam until he either publishes the
URL to his chello.nl member web page (which he could munge) or finds a
different freebie URL redirection service that doesn't proliferate spam
in another frame or popup. There must be better ways to obfuscate your
web site's URL than using hop.to with ad popups.