Detect wesite owner, how?

[Jeff]

hi

asp.net 3.5

I want from my website I'm creating being able to detect the owner of other
websites, So I'm wondering how to perform such a check.

Users can register on my website and claim that they own certain websites, I
need some code that can verify that..

Any ideas how to do this?

 

[Luciox]

Hi Jeff,

I can't think of any concrete way but as an idea you could send an email to
webmaster [at] domain name which they could validate?

There would be no guarentees that they maintain the webmaster mailbox
though...

Good luck, Luciox

 

[Hilmar Bunjes]

Hi Jeff,

I want from my website I'm creating being able to detect the owner of other
websites, So I'm wondering how to perform such a check.

Users can register on my website and claim that they own certain websites, I
need some code that can verify that..

Any ideas how to do this?

Except from sending emails to an address of the domain or verifying
ownership by whois you could verify the owner as Google does. Ask the
user to change the index/default page and add a meta-tag (call it
jeff-verify and the value is just a random value) or let the user upload
a text file with this random value to the main directory.

Best,
Hilmar

 

[Jeff]

If a user on my website registrates that he "owns" a domain, I need a way to
validate it, so that the user cannot claim he owns domain he doesn't own.

with domain I mean more like "the person the domain is registrated on".

One approach that pop up in my head right now is this:
1) Get the email contact info for the domain.
2) Send an email containing a code to this email
3) The user reads the email and must login to my website and enter the codes
I sent via email

any suggestions and ideas are welcome

 

[Hilmar Bunjes]

Once again, please see my previous reply and tell me which piece of
information you consider to be the owner.

If you do that, I'll tell you how to get it without any email or custom
metatags etc...

Unfortunately you only get the domain owner if the owner is not anonymized.

However, Jeff asked for the website owner and not the domain owner in
the first post. Using subdomains or directories it's pretty easy to be a
website owner without being a domain owner.

Best,
Hilmar

 

[Patrice]

What are you trying to do exactly ?

I remember to have seen once the following process :
- the site owner registers his site (I believe this is at Google to check
how Google analyses a site)
- once registered it ask to place a particular txt file whose base name is a
guid
- later if they can find this file on your site, this is that you are able
to place a file on this site and you likely are the "owner"

If you are not the owner you can"t place this file on the site and can't get
access to how Google indexes this site...

Perhaps a similar approach could work...

IMO it would be best to start by explaining what you need to do exactly...

 

[Jeff]

sorry if my post sounds a bit ambiguous

I'm creating a website where users can register websites, after the website
is registered I need to perform a check. A check where I see if some of the
registered users on my website is the "owner of the domain" or "owner of the
website". If user is found in the database, then I can update the Website
table (in my database) with a foreign key value to the aspnet_Users
table....

So I'm looking for ways to get "owner of the domain" or "owner of the
website", so that I can perform this check.



any ideas?

 

[Hilmar Bunjes]

Hi Jeff,

sorry if my post sounds a bit ambiguous

I'm creating a website where users can register websites, after the website
is registered I need to perform a check. A check where I see if some of the
registered users on my website is the "owner of the domain" or "owner of the
website". If user is found in the database, then I can update the Website
table (in my database) with a foreign key value to the aspnet_Users
table....

So I'm looking for ways to get "owner of the domain" or "owner of the
website", so that I can perform this check.



any ideas?

Did you read my posting?

Except from sending emails to an address of the domain or verifying
ownership by whois you could verify the owner as Google does. Ask the
user to change the index/default page and add a meta-tag (call it
jeff-verify and the value is just a random value) or let the user
upload a text file with this random value to the main directory.

Best,
Hilmar

 

[Jeff]

Yes, I read your posting, now I just responded to what Mark Rae posted

 

[Gregory A. Beamer]

hi

asp.net 3.5

I want from my website I'm creating being able to detect the owner of
other websites, So I'm wondering how to perform such a check.

Users can register on my website and claim that they own certain
websites, I need some code that can verify that..

Any ideas how to do this?

You could only include websites that have an owner email address with
the same domain name, but this will exclude people who do not use mail
on their site.

You could also run a domain registry whois query and check the email
registered with the registry, but this is a mixed bag as people can
register anonymously now. In addition, some whois registries only
contain their own registered sites, which makes checking a bit dicier
(have user specify where domain is registered is an option, but some
people do not know, as they got the registry as part of a package)

One option, however, would be to whois and then send a confirmation
email to the admin or technical contact of the site. Let people know you
are doing this as part of signup, however, or you might really piss them
off. Send the email with a link and an explanation. Something like:

Joe Webmaster registered you site on www.mysite.com today. I am sending
you this email as you are registered as the {} contact for the site
www.yoursite.com. If you registered the site, please click the following
link:

http://www.mysite.com/?id=JHSAJLJDLKFJGJ

If you did not register as the site owner, you can ignore this email.

You then send an email to the person registering letting them know the
approval of the registration is being sent to the {} contact.

No matter how you do this, you have to inform the user on sign up so
there are no hard feelings.

Peace and Grace,

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

Twitter: @gbworld
Blog: http://gregorybeamer.spaces.live.com

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