www.fliertalk ???
 

what is it...
i assume its related , just noticed when i kept entering my password it (www.fliertalk.com) wouldn;t acknowledge me. and only then realised it was the wrong site

I'd change my FlyerTalk password ASAP, if I were you.

This seems to be a MAJOR issue... honestly, House of Miles should start the paperwork for TM violations and shut them down.

Since it begins with the flyertalk front page, I would suspect major criminal intent. Do not even think of registering with any of your real information.

Plague. Avoid. Attorney, sic 'em. :mad:

Wow! It even has the exact same ads, same top level threads in the forums.

The site owner is in Georgia and has had the domain since 2003.

...unless it is just a link back to the real FT and was established by the HOM to cover this particular misspelling.

Which it seems to be. compare any FT vs Fliertalk forum

I'm suspicious because when I go to web1/web2.flyertalk.com, I'm still logged in.

If I go to fliertalk.com, it asks for my login info. No thanks.

I guess we'll get the official word tomorrow, but I am wondering why someone would WANT to hijack a FT monicker badly enough to make the effort to set up such a complete mirror site

Maybe embarrassing people is sufficient motive, but that would be about all you could do. It wouldn't let them steal from credit card accounts or anything else monetary.

If we were taking bets, I'd still stick to my original hypothesis, but there is certainly no harm in people being careful.

Well, I believe this is nothing to be concerned about.

Actually, I wrote Randy urging him to please be sure to cover these bases almost seven years ago now.

And I understand he did.

Have a great weekend all,

Mark

What do you base that comment on?

www.flyertalk.net - points to someones travel site registered in 2002, not seven years ago.
www.flyertalk.org - spam site
www.flyertalk.info - spam site
www.fliertalk.com - belongs to someone else, not FT or IF
www.fliertalk.net - doesn't exist
www.flyertalk.biz - doesn't exist
www.flyertalk.co.uk - spam site
www.flyertalk.us - doesn't exist

So, I'd understand he DID NOT...

As for "not being concerned", I'd leave that conclusion up to the FT staff who are the only ones that can confirm that the domain actually does point to the legitimate FT servers. The domain isn't registered by FT or Insideflyer.

Owned by a former member, it appears.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/member.php?u=9515

Curiouser and curiouser. The copyright does link back to WebFlyer, though. Huh.

GG

---

Wow! Thanks for the input. Havin' a bad day? Lol !!!! Too much!!!

As anyone willing to read it can very easily see, as I stated above:

"Originally Posted by doc

Well, I believe this is nothing to be concerned about.

Actually, I wrote Randy urging him to please be sure to cover these bases almost seven years ago now.

And I understand he did."

Naturally, I could be wrong of course. If Randy is wrong!

Yet, unfortunately, the FT TOS, as you well know, prohibit the posting of personal emails, and such.

But I'll try to give you a clue without risking the possibility of incurring the wrath of our 'member volunteer' staff of which you are a part! LOL!!

I imagine a bright young man such as yourself has heard of the "trademark" concept?

I'm well aware of the domain name situation issue as I thought I made clear above. I too, like any moron, can easily search these out, and I did so, almost seven or so years ago, and brought the issue to Randys attention then, as I'd said.

Perhaps you can ask Randy himself if I'd advised him and what he said at the time - or if he would like me to post the email excahnge concerning this issue.

Meanwhile, I take Randy at his word, and will refrain from further comment on this issue.

Have a great holiday weekend all,

Mark

I think it is utterly irresponsible for any member to state that this is "nothing to be concerned about"!

This is something to be VERY, VERY concerned about. If anyone has logged into this scam site, they need to change thier password, NOW.

Please ignore people who know nothing of what they speak.

Yeah, 'tis true.

Makes me wonder about jimpop's status though...

I know next to nothing about bulletin boards, so this duplicity is totally a mystery to me.

How about youScottC ? As a very internet savvy guy, do you have any insights as to how this site can show all FlyerTalk posts, up to the minute, and still not be FlyerTalk?

I have just taken the admittedly illegal step of registering a duplicate ID. I did this solely for the purpose of seeing (and telling you) what would happen if I tried registering and posting with it through Fliertalk.com.

Even after registering with it there, I was not able to log in using it on Fliertalk.

It did, however, register me with FlyerTalk and I was able to sign in with it here and make this post.

It is very possible (although I don't know) if Fliertalk received the information that I supplied to register and/or log in (I used a different password).

What is clear, however, is that I am now registered with FT with two user names, which is against the TOS so I would like to request the mods to remove "DovsterDuplicateID" from the databank.

Dovster

I am just confirming that I did, indeed, make the above post and it was not someone trying to impersonate me.

Yes we should be totally clueless like you CameraGuy.

It's a URL not the site, and most people that revisit have it has a bookmark to the correct URL, not as the false one.

He is correct and you are the utterly irresponsible for red flagging this, quick lets land this plane someone wrote BOB on a sick bag.

:) :p :) Get over it people sites with like names are registered daily

And for the people that can not read "Most Sites are Registered Misspelled"

Get over it, it's nothing new!

And you are? This has happen to almost every website on I've delt with on the internet, this is nothing new.....

---

Ok thanks. I'll try to do so in the future but in this case I've already read your post!

In any case, enjoy the Columbus Day holiday everyone!

Mark

{Deleted the histrionics}

Alas, you are too new of a poster to realize the history FT has with password scamming and parody websites, among other things.

It is a real concern to FT members, as it has happened in the past.

In reality, after pondering the situation, I suspect I know that this is. I believe it is a parody website set up many years ago by an individual who was against the Save SkyMiles movement. Since the Save Skymiles era is over, it seem the individual in question has made it a front end to FT.

Oh please, does your post count on this site matter to the amount of work I've done elsewhere? Post count does not matter, as I've said in another post on this site in another area.

So? it happens on Every website that does not enforce key based logins, are you saying that Flyertalk should offer bank type security?

It happens with banks daily and many other websites, if you look at the DNS registried daily, you would see that the majority of those are mispelt (and for what reasons)

Unless you are going to issue RSA keys or alike you are on a loosing battle, the fact is, I could open www.flyertalk.cz (for example) and make it look the the same and there is little that could be done for months, and little legal process to get it removed for the same period.

The fact is scamming is part of the internet, calling out, call the sky is falling, but it will happen over and over, month on end and it is up to the users to make sure they enter the correct URL.

The simple way would be for Flyertalk to go secure Https and get a certificate, making every load the Certificate on entry.

End of the day, you will suffer this for years on end

How long did you lurk here prior to registering? I don't care about post count, I was looking at your registration date.

That is not what I said, I said given the acrimonious history between some members here, some people are concerned about it. And I used to be in Data Security, and that is NOT what I was talking about.

As for my last two sentences, they had nothing to do with website security or spoofing, or trademark violations, or squatters. I just said that based upon what I could remember, I believe I knew what that site was used for several years ago, and that is ancient history, so the registrant set it up as nothing more than a mirror.

Plus, CameraGuy tend to get a bit dramatic occasionally. ;)

(No offense, CG. :) )

fliertalk.com is not owned by flyertalk.com. It does, however, point to our servers, for now. I would not be concerned up to this point if you put you password into the site because it was on our servers ^. That does not mean that it will continue to be. The domain owner has the right at anytime to change the site to whatever they want, whether it be their own site that competes with flyertalk or a site that looks and feels like flyertalk but is not. For your security the flyertalk servers will not allow login from this domain or any others.

----

Thank you Joshua.

mark

Given what Joshua said I concede you guys who were worried were right and I was wrong. In fact, I believe Joshua missed one possibility: The person owning the site could, even if it was directly pointed at the real FT, have a keylogger or equivalent running -- and thus be able to steal passwords after all.

Sounds like the probability of that in this particular case was small but it was, nonetheless, possible.

---

Well, I'm not sure that I undertand? Something, in this case accessing FT, can nearly always possibly happen, almost anywhere, at any site, no? We take risks each and every day, no? Hopefuly, however, we take care also! ;)

Even the real FT could theoretically do that! :D Yet I doubt it! :)

Or someone could hack the site itself. So....

We all take a chance when we go online, and when we enter a URL or click on a link, I think! ;)

Be prudent and go to flyertalk.com

As I said before above, I'd contacted Randy long ago concerning this specific matter, and he assured me long ago as well that he was well aware of it and was addressing such issues.

Thanks again, Joshua.

Enjoy FT everyone

Mark

OK, let me try to explain. Suppose site A (owned by someone else other than FT, as in this case) redirects all traffic to the real FT. If you go to site A and try to log in to FT, FT will now not let you log in, Joshua fixed that.

BUT -- if site A looks like FT and it misleads you into trying to log in, you won't realize something is wrong until you try to log in once or more and it doesn't work. If site A is capturing keystrokes before routing to FT, the owner of site A will know your FT handle and password by reading the site A capture log.

This practice is a variant of the internet con known as "phishing."

I think that is what the earlier posters were, validly it now seems, concerned about.

I apologize if you knew that all along and were referring to something else in your post just above.

You would be tough to impersonate...If anyone wanted to in the first place :D

Got a question,
If in fact this other site did get my flyertalk password ( no I didnt login there)
What does he have? besides the ability to post as tonerman?
Anything else I should be concerned about?

Dan

Hypothetically, if you used your FT password on any other sites they could be compromised as well. Independent of your FT password, if your security patches and virus scanners are not up-to-date your personal computer could be compromised and anything on it made available to a 3rd party. Not to mention it could be turned into a zombie machine and used to send spam or attack another system at the command of another.


Unlikely, to be sure, but possible.

You are current with Windows updates? Assuming you are running Windows, but all OSs have the problem to some degree.

I suppose a lot of people use a specific username/password combination on a lot of different websites, since it is fairly hard to remember 20+ different of those. And thus it could be used to log in to eBay or continental.com or something like this where sensitive information is located.

www.fliertalk.com is still active, looking exactly like www.flyertalk.com, but not recognizing my username or password. I got there by doing a google search "miletracker flyertalk".

Why is this site still being allowed to copy FlyerTalk over a year after this thread was started?

Who are they? What are they up to?

It isn't viewable anymore. Unfortunate since the Flyertalk forums are blocked at my offices but by going to fliertalk.com I was able to get round it! :mad:

it begins with the flyertalk front page :):):)

I did a Google search today on a FF-related topic, and there were 2 references in the first page of results from fliertalk.com. This means that IB does have a serious problem.

Perhaps this is amusing, or perhaps this is another theft of FlyerTalkers' and/or IB's intellectual property, but I discovered this via a Google search:

http://tripfly.org/discussion/21325/...ntina-flights/

It seemed strangely familiar, emphasis on "strange," since it appears to be a "Babelfenglish" version of this FT thread (i.e., run through a translator twice):

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=683978

Compare what iahphx wrote:

"As I mentioned before, on several ocassions, I've tried to book fares that are shown to be available on certain flights. Most of the time, as I'm completing my reservation, I get an error message, and the seats mysteriously disappear from inventory if I run the search again!"

to what "doemioes," her/his alternate-universe doppelganger, wrote:

"As I mentioned before, on several ocassions, I've constant to paperback fares that are shown to be season on assured flights. Most of the chance, as I'm completing my quake, I get an blunder dedication, and the seats secretive Poetic evanish from stock if I run the quest again!"

Through a Google search, I've just landed on a www.tripfly.org page as well. While the content is clearly taken from flyertalk.com , it is so strangely garbled that it really makes no sense any longer.

Does anybody have a clue what that site is all about? All I could think of was the "parallel universe" from Star Trek... ;)