B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
2 edits | Mozilla Goes to Alexa, Again
This happened to me once a long time ago.
I'm near certain it has nothing to do with spyware or extensions.
Suddenly, after a long time browsing, if I revisit »www.dslreports.com (www.dslreports.com) I am redirected to what appears to be »alexa.com .
My URL bar still shows »/ (www.dslreports.com)
Watching the activity in the status bar, upon each manual refresh, it goes from
"Connecting to www.dslreports.com...."
to
"Waiting for www.dslreports.com..."
to
"Transferring data from www.dslreports.com...."
to
"Waiting for client.alexa.com..."
to
"Connecting to client.alexa.com..."
Either Justin's doing some testing, or my Mozilla is seriously screwy.
1. I *NEVER* intentionally visit Alexa, or have their spyware installed. My search defaults are for Google.
2. Examining the page source shows a window title of "Source of: »/" but the HTML for Alexa, with no "dslreports.com" anywhere in the text.
3. The only commonality if I ping www.dslreports.com and www.alexa.com (or client.alexa.com) from the command line is the first octet.
4. That HTML source includes the following -- can someone explain this to me? Is DSLReports somehow autolaunching an Alexa search page via a corrupt stylesheet?
<link src="http://client.alexa.com/common/css/styles.css"
href="http://client.alexa.com/common/css/styles.css"
type="text/css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="http://client.alexa.com/common/js/search_functions.js"
language="JavaScript"></script>
Thanks. (I'm in now via »broadbandreports.com (broadbandreports.com) .)
Hmm. Preview showed me two things:
1. I posted about this vis a vis Google at »www2.broadbandreports.com/forum/···10743321
2. Weirdly, all of my links to DSLReports and BroadbandReports are getting turned into nulls in this message! (I've gone back and added the URL names in parentheses.)
Note that I've switched browsers (Mozilla 1.6 to 1.7) and profiles since that older thread.... Weird.
Edit: After restarting the browser, the effect seems to be gone. So some part of Mozilla gets corrupt... but why Alexa of all places?
-- B |
|
Blackbird
Built for Speed
Premium
join:2005-01-14
Fort Wayne, IN
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Curious...! I don't find any of the Alexa code you listed in the www.dslreports.com source view right now, and I've never encountered that problem. Could there be some sort of bizarre cached file corruption/swapping that could do this? It's not the same thing, but I do know that my Firefox sometimes places one site's link-bar shortcut icon onto another nearby shortcut (eg BBR's icon appears also on Drudge Report's shortcut), and that only clears up if I dump all the caches and close/reopen the browser. But after several hours use, it reasserts itself again out-of-the-blue. Strange... 
--
If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see... |
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ghost16825
Use security metrics
Premium
join:2003-08-26 | reply to B
Perhaps consequences of the DNS cache poisoning attack going around at the moment. |
|
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28 | Hmm, but see my PING tests... It does seem to be browser-specific.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
|
ghost16825
Use security metrics
Premium
join:2003-08-26
| said by B  :Hmm, but see my PING tests... It does seem to be browser-specific. -- B I mean this:
»www2.dslreports.com/forum/remark···ode=flat |
|
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
|
Yes, I know. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem to apply to me, because at the same time www.dslreports.com "resolved" to Alexa's site in Mozilla, I was still getting valid pings through to www.dslreports.com at 209.123.192.186.
So my DNS wasn't poisoned. (It would apply to every operation on my machine trying to resolve that hostname.)
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
|
Kayrac
Premium
join:2001-09-29
Rochester, NH | check your hosts yet? |
|
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28 | I don't have a HOSTS file.
And the same DNS argument would apply in any case.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
|
Kayrac
Premium
join:2001-09-29
Rochester, NH | laugh, misread your post before mine, argh, done posting for the night :P |
|
spooler0
Premium
join:2004-11-17
| reply to B
Good information. If you get it solved, would you post an update to the thread.
How often does it occur and how long must you be browsing before it happens?
And gather it is not only solely with Mozilla, but also only when browsing the DSLR sites and not others? |
|
EGeezer
Go Bobcats
Premium
join:2002-08-04
Country! | reply to B
I wonder if there's anything in the browser cache that might have caused retrieval... |
|
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| But my older thread ( »Google To Amazon?? ) would indicate it's not DSLR (or Google) related.
And the "browser cache" theory would make more sense to me if I had EVER visited Alexa before.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
|
thedip
join:2001-02-09
Beaver Falls, PA
| If you have win2k, try a search of your mozilla directory for files containing alexa and see what comes up. WinXP doesn't by default search all files when looking for files containing something, just documents.
I'm as lost as anybody on this one, but a search might yield something to check into. |
|
EGeezer
Go Bobcats
Premium
join:2002-08-04
Country!
 ·Callcentric
 ·RoadRunner Cable
·AT&T CallVantage
1 edit | reply to B
My general SWAG may be all wet, but suppose that during the rebuilding here at BBR that images and links were moved from server to server, Google ads, front page links, the "get Firefox" logo and other were scattered around different servers and somehow the style sheet or link was picked up from a broken page. In that case, the cache or temps might hold some corrupted or partial data from pages you may not have visited, but may have been linked from the somewhat dynamic BBR site. That's the stuff that "unexpected results" are made of...
To me, it would be worth a look to see what if any stuff was in cache and temps, then erase them to see if the symptom goes away.
Edit - As your first post indicates, it was apparently transient and similar to your present one, so I agree it could be anything - this is only one guess.
HTH I'll be interested to see what you find. |
|
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| reply to thedip
I'm in Win9x, but the search works just fine.
Moderately interesting results. The only "alexa" hits in my cache that predate the phenomenon are a couple of pages I visited at Experts-Exchange that contain the following boilerplate towards the end of the HTML source:
<a href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=experts-exchange.com&url=http://www.
*experts-exchange.com/" title="Internet Rank" onclick="void(window.open(this.href,'',''));
*return false;">Internet Rank</a>
(*) WARNING 1 long line(s) split
and an e-mail message with a really large (9 MB) attachment. Not sure if the string is in the attachment or the MIME encoding.
Geezer, good thoughts. Please note that I had this same problem, but with Google, under a prior version of Mozilla.
And the phenomenon was only repeatable until I closed the browser session.
By the way, thanks to all of you for your input and suggestions!
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function |
|
just passing through
@202.134.x.x | The Mozilla "Suite" uses Alexa (xslt.alexa.com) for it's "What's Related" sidebar search engine.
"Take a good look around, you will see why there are instructions on packets of peanuts." - Me |
|
spooler0
Premium
join:2004-11-17
| said by just passing through:
The Mozilla "Suite" uses Alexa (xslt.alexa.com) for it's "What's Related" sidebar search engine. Is "What's Related" not an option in the "browser only" installation of Mozilla?
If not, where would the options related to it be found? |
|
sivran
Long Live The Suite
Premium
join:2003-09-15
Arlington, TX
clubs:
1 edit | He is either confused or using a newer build. There is no "What's Related" in Mozilla 1.7.3 or 1.7.5. Nor is it in Firefox 1.0x, nor any previous Phoenix/Fire* build, iirc.
There is a "Show Related Links" in IE 6, however. |
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spooler0
Premium
join:2004-11-17 | Thank you, Sivran.
Let us know if you solve the mystery, B. |
|
just passing through
@202.134.x.x
| reply to sivran
quote:
Said by Sirvan
He is either confused or using a newer build. There is no "What's Related" in Mozilla 1.7.3 or 1.7.5. Nor is it in Firefox 1.0x, nor any previous Phoenix/Fire* build, iirc.
There is a "Show Related Links" in IE 6, however.
Ummmm, OK whatever you say.
Screenshot is a "browser only" installation of Mozilla 1.7.5
The "Alexa" related sidebar is and has been present in Mozilla Suite builds since at least 1.4
It is not present in Firefox, instead a "Google" related extension is available for FF.
"Take a good look around, you will see why there are instructions on packets of peanuts." - Me |
|
