Warning: jokeyrhy.me domain is not mine

Domain lapsed and currently owned by an unaffiliated scraper

Learning some lessons about domains and hosting

Warning / TL;DR:

  • I don’t own the jokeyrhy.me domain, so update your bookmarks or RSS feed reader

This blog on its custom CNAME

I originally started this blog with a custom CNAME on GitHub Pages, but there didn’t seem to be a solution for HTTPS on top of this. In retrospect, CloudFlare, or something like it, probably would have worked well enough, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

What I was after:

  • free static hosting

  • custom CNAME: jokeyrhy.me

  • HTTPS with a cheap / free certificate

Originally, the compromise I took was to drop the HTTPS requirement. I registered a domain at name.com, and used it as a custom domain with GitHub Pages.

A little while later, I transferred the domain over to AWS Route53. This was primarily for convenience, as I had other AWS services at the time, and I otherwise had no problems with name.com.

About face, HTTPS is too important

With Google, Mozilla, and the EFF all strongly encouraging the use of HTTPS, I eventually looked back at my 3 original requirements. Of these three, I then decided to drop the custom CNAME requirement. This is how I ended up with my blog hosted at https://jokeyrhyme.github.io/.

I did originally have a domain registered for the custom CNAME, and I (foolishly?) decided to let it lapse, given that I wasn’t using it anymore. From what I can tell, someone else registered it roughly 3 or 4 months after it lapsed. They currently have it pointing at a stale copy of my blog.

whois jokeyrhy.me

Some of the more useful information from a whois jokeyrhy.me is below:

Domain Name: JOKEYRHY.ME
Domain ID: D108500000017342012-AGRS
WHOIS Server:
Referral URL: www.namecheap.com
Updated Date: 2016-02-05T14:18:07Z
Creation Date: 2015-11-05T23:04:40Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2016-11-05T23:04:40Z
Sponsoring Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 1068
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID: 1LNUBGQ0CMA1AX1C
Registrant Name: WhoisGuard Protected
Registrant Organization: WhoisGuard, Inc.
...
Registrant Email: 870fa39017074e43a8c7145c6a1e0277.protect@whoisguard.com
Admin ID: G2YHAUVDORRMKY3I
Admin Name: WhoisGuard Protected
Admin Organization: WhoisGuard, Inc.
...
Admin Email: 870fa39017074e43a8c7145c6a1e0277.protect@whoisguard.com
Tech ID: CD3A5N3UGLLZV0O2
Tech Name: WhoisGuard Protected
Tech Organization: WhoisGuard, Inc.
...
Tech Email: 870fa39017074e43a8c7145c6a1e0277.protect@whoisguard.com
Name Server: KATE.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: SEAN.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned

Trying to be clever

When I first discovered this, I thought I could be clever and add a JavaScript redirect or warning, triggered if location.origin was not a domain that I owned. It was then that I realised they were hosting a static copy of my blog, and adding any new script would not be an effective countermeasure.

What now?

For now, I’ve just set an alarm for the domain expiry date, so we’ll see if I can get lucky and register it back. Or maybe not. /shrug

Ron -