Different domain linking to my linode server
After I did a Google search on my domain to see what would come up, I found that there is another site that is using my content. Turns out they resolve to the same ip address as my linode host. Is that something that is possible on a shared CPU setup? I thought it was only resources that are shared with the public ip address remaining unique. Has anybody seen this before? I’ve disabled all other sites except mine in nginx but just concerned about this.
3 Replies
Is the other site deliberately copying your site or is it just that their domain resolves to your IP address?
One of my linodes had a lot of other domains pointed at its IP address and it was probably due to that IP address previously being used to host those sites (i.e. a previous linode customer).
It’s not easy to tell. I did some more digging and found they have a different dns server so it may be that a different provider has provided that ip address or perhaps they entered it incorrectly in their dns records. Doesn’t use the linode dns servers so I don’t think it’s a linode customer.
CassandraD
Linode Staff
Some of our customers use other DNS servers, so it's still very possible that it was a Linode user. Additionally, the IPs we use belong to us. If you run whois $IPADDRESS you should see that the IP is ours.
If it were just that a site resolved to your IP, I'd say it's almost a guarantee that the IP was used previously by someone else and they just haven't gotten around to deleting their old DNS records. I know I've been guilty of this, (and this is a good reminder to take care of that now).
The fact that they seem to be using your content is weird, but there are a few things that could be going on. If it seems like you're on your site when you visit the other domain, I think it's likely a DNS issue as was suggested. If you use whois on the other domain, you can find out who the registrar is and reach out to try to get the other records removed by the owner of the other domain.
If you search for your site or some of your content with Google, it may look like the other site is using your content due to Google Indexing somehow. I'm not entirely sure how that works, but you may be able to use the Google Search Console to control how the search works so that the other domain doesn't show up.
If you're not familiar, "Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results." We have a Community Question that addresses verifying your domain there if that helps.