Dear All,

I was stunned today, I can't actually believe what i saw when I went to my own website today @ rwbk.net. I found a parking website. I thought "ouch... did i forget to renew, i can't have forgotten, its December it renews!!!". After I log in to the ukreg / fasthosts i see that as a) it has not expired, b) it seems to be fine.

After my checks rwbk.net resolved to ...

Pinging rwbk.net [213.171.195.105] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 213.171.195.105: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=245

Now "because i use this for email and dev routing only" I on purpose do not add a A:Record for rwbk.net, thus the ping should return unable to resolve hostname. So you can imagine that when (after 2 years of behaving its self) and i saw that, i thought i had been compromised and of course then panic. After a prudent hour of changing passwords and SSH Keys (always a nightmare). I phones fasthosts to learn a totally unacceptable truth of what went on.

In December 2011 they instituted a new "mechanic" where website that do not set A Records on the root domain (must be reconfigured) and thierfor direct rwbk.net (to which www. is a cnamed subdomain) to there parking website. Without you permission i might add!!!

To add insult to this, when you click on ...

Why is this page displayed?
This "website holding" page is displayed when you visit rwbk.net because the owner has registered the domain name (or set up a sub-domain), but has not yet created a website.

Without this page, website visitors would see a "Page not found" error. The holding page confirms that the domain's DNS has been set up correctly.
... ok ... now I wen't totally over the top ballistic at the poor level 2 help desk technical adviser at fasthosts on what gave them the right to effectivly "Poison" my DNS without permission.

I have used ukreg (aka FastHosts) as a domain registrar for about 8 years now. I never had a problem, but this "issue" is just such a serious problem in general on how the internet can be "abused" by people in positions of power i thought i would put this down. I now have a wonderful flag with them of "don't edit ANYTHING" on this account without expressed customer approval, so i hope that this makes sure it never happens again. I will make certain of that, by transferring my domains away ASAP to someone i trust.

This is just a heads up to anyone using Fasthosts and might be like me and have a few DNS names that you dont use for "web" and purely service domains, they WILL have done you too :S