That is if they dont google

The etenders.ie domain was deleted and reregistered very quickly so it is doubtful if anyone from etenders.gov.ie was keeping an eye on the domain. The best way to remove the brand confusion would be to use Google and type link:www.etenders.ie to see what sites are linking to the etenders.ie site and contact them about correcting the links so that they point to the official Etenders site.

John, your comment is bang on the nail.

I do think that the etenders.gov people need to contact their clients, and the misguiding websites to direct them to the correct website.

Not their fault, in total, but people would appreciate it more if they did.

Guys,

Those of you saying “how could anyone get caught by a site like that” may be missing an important point I think.

Daithi touched on it.

Many sites link to etenders.ie mistakenly taking it for the legitimate government tenders site.

Also, the real etenders site is actively being marketed to SMEs most of whose knowledge of tech is on a level with my Dad’s (that is to say poor at best).

These people have never heard of phishing. They take it as read that if they follow a link from the Dublin City Council site, for example, to the etenders site, that it is legitimate.

And if they are asked for login details, they simply look for the piece of paper with the username/password scribbled on it and proceed as normal.

I take your point about people mistaking one thing for the other, BUT, like everything in life, commonsense has to be applied.

If one day you go to etenders.gov.ie (whos login page seems to be http://www.etenders.gov.ie/login.aspx), you will plainly see:

“eTenders has been developed by the Department of Finance”

you have a visual recognition that it is the valid website you want to go to.

If the next day you go to the address, http://www.etenders.ie, which looks completely different, commonsense applies.

I am sure your father, like mine, would: stop, think, and say “this looks different than normal”.

What then: they look at the piece of paper they have the address written down on (Tom-I’m sure your father has his passwords written in his diary, as mine does!), he will then see, “shit, I made a mistake”.

And will then go to the correct site.

This is what *should* happen.

I spent almost 2 years working in an Internet café and I had many “senior aged people” coming in.

I understand your point about the “piece of paper”, but my experience of people who do things this way is they want to see the same thing as they normally do. (I remember a woman who came in every week to send an e-mail to her daughter living abroad. She would look for the same computer, at the same time every day. She would have her notebook with the steps 1. http://www.hotmail.com, 2. her address, 3. her password, 4. create new e-mail, etc…)

If that was applied to this situation, the person would have looked at the screen, seen the difference and thought “hang on something wrong here”.

Caution needs to be applied on the Internet as in real life-again the example of the telephone number, or the wrong shop, etc.

Now, talking about should the etenders.gov people have registered the etenders.ie domainname?

Yes, they most definately should have. If it was registered at the time, like Liz Nolan said, fair enough. BUT they should have been keeping an eye on it all the while.

This happened recently with a company I used to work for. I explained and explained that we needed to register a domainname with our company name in it. It never happened, and someone else managed to get it.

I don’t see it being phished, but before I left I recommended that they keep an eye on the registration of it, and if possible enter into some legal proceedings to get it back.

With regards the linking from official governmental agencies (Dublin Corpo, etc) to an incorrect website, then those guys should be shot.
Seriously. Again, if that were a telephone number and they gave an incorrect telephone number, they would be harrased until they changed it.

All in all, common sense and safe browsing needs to be explained to people.

Internet is not anything new, its just a new way of doing something.

Sorry for the extended comment!

bernard

I know some of the guys who help startup mTLD (in fact, one of their consultants used to be my acting CTO for a while). I should have just asked them before getting it wrong, twice!

Liz,
The etenders.ie domain in 2002 was registered to a company called Xtender Deals Limited which was apparently part of an EU wide government tenders website. The etenders.ie domain was deleted and reregistered very quickly so it is doubtful if anyone from etenders.gov.ie was keeping an eye on the domain. The best way to remove the brand confusion would be to use Google and type link:www.etenders.ie to see what sites are linking to the etenders.ie site and contact them about correcting the links so that they point to the official Etenders site.

thank you, you have just proven my point.

The title of my post (and the text of the post asks the question:

Is it possible that etenders.ie is a legitimate site who themselves have been hacked/phished by someone trying to harvest real etenders site logons?

You were obviously confused and thought, when I said etenders.ie, I meant etenders.gov.ie and I was asking had the government site been phished by etenders.ie

An easy mistake. Just as easy as it is for someone to mistake the two sites and inadvertently enter their login details on the etenders.ie site.

I’m delighed mTLD are taking over the .ie stuff as we’ve been ripped off for long enough!

They are clearly not phishing. I think that’s a ridiculous statement.

Robin, when did I say they were phishing?

thanks for dropping by and commenting.

A couple of points.
1. The new/del history on the domain is:
| etenders | 2002-02-04 00:00:00 | NEW |
| etenders | 2006-04-20 00:00:00 | DEL |
| etenders | 2006-05-08 00:00:00 | NEW |

So the domain could have been registered by the dept in 2006. It might have been advisable to do so.

2. Has the dept made any representations to the domain owner to place a notice on the home page re-directing people who land there inadvertently thinking they are on the government’s procurement site?

They are clearly not phishing. I think that’s a ridiculous statement.

Those of you saying “how could anyone get caught by a site like that” may be missing an important point I think.

Daithi touched on it.

Many sites link to etenders.ie mistakenly taking it for the legitimate government tenders site.

Also, the real etenders site is actively being marketed to SMEs most of whose knowledge of tech is on a level with my Dad’s (that is to say poor at best).

These people have never heard of phishing. They take it as read that if they follow a link from the Dublin City Council site, for example, to the etenders site, that it is legitimate.

And if they are asked for login details, they simply look for the piece of paper with the username/password scribbled on it and proceed as normal.

I take your points about the notices having incorrect information and we will alert all buyers (and our registered suppliers, 35,000, to this issue. The notices are created by buyers in over 1600 public sector organisations and it’s not possible to monitor each one individually. There are about 1,000 ‘active’ tenders at any given time.

BTW, I was introduced to Paul Walsh (at McAfee, do you know if he received the email because I haven’t heard back?

McAfee SiteAdvisor (http://www.siteadvisor.com) does actually change an icon on their toolbar when you land on a dodgy site. I have been using it for a couple of months now and find it very effective.

It spots scam sites, phishing sites and sites with bad downloads. It also tags each link returned by google so you can see if a site has any problems before you go to it.

It doesn’t reference this one as I don’t think the site is a true phishing site - i.e. it isn’t making any effort to look like the real site.

Disclaimer: I do actually work for McAfee so am not exactly impartial but I do think that SiteAdvisor is one of the best things we do.

Well, that’s possible with Content Labels and a use case I’ve intended to address.

VeriSign have addressed this through a partnership with Microsoft but you need to pay around $800 per certificate which to me, is very expensive.