Anyone ever see?

[universal4]

Geek Alert

Anyone ever see a situation that no matter what you try, a domain answers in a browser even though you point the domain to the local host in your hosts file?

A few weeks ago I was doing some testing on a site on test server on my local lan and since I set the site up on a FQDN I needed the host file entry to point at the 192.168.1.x ip until my testing was done.

Well I discovered this did not work (in firefox) although it worked in other browsers.

this bothered me on many fronts.
#1 If I type a domain wrong, I wanna see the 404
#2 If I happen to have dns wrong for a domain (and my dns is authoritative) I most certainly want the 404 so I can fix a dns entry mistake.
#3 If I am doing some testing and I make a host file entry to a different ip, I need the host file read correctly so I get the test site on the temporary ip, NOT the live site.
# Other reasons too numerous to mention (I block unwanted domains regularly with the host file)

This was a new behavior and one I wanted to know why so I did some research and found there is a setting in the newer versions of firefox has a config setting that needed changed.

network.dns.offline-local

The default setting is true but once I set that to false I was able to test further, although if I recall it seemed a little buggy.

Then today while browsing at one point I accidentally typed a domain incorrectly. Normally this would produce a 404 or a site owned by someone different, but in this particular case I noticed the browser using a function that called siteplug_com and then redirected.

I went back to the stackexchange or superuser response where I found the original place to make the FF change and double checked I had the correct settings, but it kinda bugged me so I did some further testing.

I added entry's in the host file for
siteplug_com
www.siteplug_com
ww4.siteplug_com
*.siteplug_com (this one should have bee sufficient but wanted to be sure)

I point all 4 of them to 127.0.0.1 which is local host.

I then pinged various wording of the domain and all return the local host address.

Opera, MS Edge and Internet explorer all return a 404 on that domain.

Firefox takes all versions of the url and redirects to the live website and completely ignores the host file, which is behavior that shouldn't happen and shows it ignores directions from the OS. (before anyone says different, from what I can tell, in some cases the same behavior is seen on Linux installs, although not sure about this sitplug business yet)

(this would almost be like a browser suddenly to ignore an htaccess file to put it in an affiliate perspective - although I can not prove it only happens during a 404, but do not like that mozilla seemed to protect the siteplug domain inside it's own code)

For background on what siteplug does see their title and description
The site title is
<title>SITEPLUG - Meet us at ad:tech mumbai 2019 | 13-14 November | Autocorrects browsing errors | Performance Marketing</title>
Search descritpions are
<h1 class="hidden-xs">SITEPLUG GENERATES OVER<br>$300 MILLION IN SALES<br>FOR BRANDS ONLINE</h1>

What bugs me about this is that firefox as well as any browser could so easily steal any traffic any time they want, and how they completely ignore and override directives by the computer owner.


I have always kept up pretty well on updates and am using the very latest 71.0 64 bit version.

I do know that in the past Firefox never had some of the issues and craziness I have seen in the last year, but they have had a few major version revision in recent times, and in fact have completely made wide sweeping changes in what they allow, even going as far as disabling thousands of plugins and by default disallowing even an install of any plugin "they" deem inappropriate.

It may be time for me to change browsers for at least some functions, but this is the first time I have not been able to convince firefox to act at least somewhat the way I want it to.

If anyone is brave enough to try some of the above out, let me know what the results are.

Rick
Universal4

[universal4]

So lets say that someone owned a very commonly misspelled domain name and put up a site for whatever reason.

Let's say that brand goes to siteplug, buys ads or pays an affiliate fee for the redirects for the misspellings. Siteplug offers:

FLEXIBLE PRICING MODELS CPA/CPC/CPS

The site owner of the misspelled name now loses all traffic from firefox for the name.

This could eventually have far reaching future implications for web business any time any single company or browser with any name (hint hint of the alphabet) to just take any traffic or coded url they want.

Rick
Universal4

/end rant

[universal4]

Another ignored name
zoho_com

I figured I would try that one when I saw the name in the spf record for siteplug and sure enough, responds in FF only.

So I decided to do further testing, it appears that other entries I have in my host file to stop such things as drive by installs or crap advertising popups or pop unders (I search for software often) are now being ignored, so it appears with the latest version 71.0 it completely ignores the host file.

This is starting to appear that firefox just is not a good browser for any kind of tech development any longer with these kinds of changes, and could not be recommended to schools, governments or just about any kind of operation that needs control of ip space or web browsing based up ip's if they depended on the host file for manipulation of such ip space.


Rick
Universal4

[ddm]

very interesting and good to know. thanks for sharing this sir.

[universal4]

I honestly wish I had been incorrect about it, but so far my results are that, without some sort of change, Firefox will absolutely not follow the host file entries, which has since at least Windows 95 has always worked for almost all browsers worth using at all.

Wanna block porn sites, or sites that use trojan or browser hack drive by installs, or any other sites you want to make sure never answer? Use the hosts file, and now it only works if Firefox is not you browser of choice.

Maybe someone will know the answer to this one but so far it has eluded my research. Maybe its another setting that one can make that stops ignoring known dns over rides.

Rick
Universal4