Please remove email from default page

Virtualmin
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|| SYSTEM INFORMATION||
|----------------------|---------------------------|
| OS type and version | Debian Linux 11 |
| Webmin version | 2.101 |
| Usermin version | 2.001 |
| Virtualmin version | 7.8.2 |
| Theme version | 21.04 |
| Package updates | All installed packages are up to date |

I go through a lot of trouble to keep my email addresses from being visible on websites. Now I find out the default page puts it there for bot harvesting. This may indicate why a rarely used address is now starting to get spammed.

I think this is bad form and I really don’t see any utility to it. Would you please consider changing this behavior?

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2

I agree with the request. A valid publicly exposed email address becomes the source for spammers.

3

That means we would have to remove the whole Report block.

4

Simple fix → just put up a blank index.html page or better still a website of your own design saying how wonderful the internet domain is :slight_smile:

5

It continues to be true that the default page can and should be replaced with whatever suits your business and use case.

It’s just a plain old web page, you can use literally anything.

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Putting an email address on the web is just bad form. Period. Again, these are email domains. This wasn’t the page that showed when I initially put up the sites. I didn’t know of this change until someone brought it up.

You have solved a problem that doesn’t exist and created a quite real one.

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7

What purpose does this really solve? You really believe the site owner doesn’t know they haven’t put up a page? Some random person will visit the site and inform them? Seriously? I see no valid use case here.

If I configure a site for a client and they don’t use it for a month, damage is already done to that email address.

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8

According to @Joe stories, I realized that we cannot even remotely images how people can interpret the default page.

9

I mean, I never suggested putting email addresses on the page. I was just tired of people blaming us (and tracking me down on random social media to send me pictures of their dick) for spam sites.

10

I was unsure about adding it in the first place, but no one mentioned anything during the presentation or testing. I’m okay with removing it…

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Still, I’m surprised anyone uses the default. I just assumed most folks would have their own landing page with their own branding and whatever information they need their customers to know, like docs and issue tracker and billing links, etc.

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The best thing to do is searching for the default page on the Internet. It seems that there are a lot of websites that use it until they come with a new content (or maybe not). Here is one found in the first 10 results returned by Google.

https://www.charleslea.org/index.html

EDIT: there are too many links that point to Virtualmin domain. I like the way you did it in the past.

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/website-default-page/

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Why do you like it about the past version? By the way, I need to update the docs.

14

It was a simple, informative page, without too many details. Successfully replaced the Apache variant.

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That was exactly the problem. I will remove Report section. The rest will stay.

I will also update docs to include the new page screenshots.

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I’ve used the default in the past despite having pages in sub directories that I really didn’t want public scrutiny of. Nothing top secret, but, having the default page gives the illusion nothing else is there.

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I just like the illusion that a blank index.html provides → nothing, empty, vacant, no one here, go away, not of any interest to you visitor/bot/web scraper

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I actually like having some sort of default page, it helps test and confirm that everything in the chain is working. But unless things have changed, we can have a skeleton page of our own making that resolves the issue for everyone.

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This isn’t about a default page. It is about having my email address posted to it.

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This isn’t about a default page. It is about having my email address posted to it.

Next version of Virtualmin have Report section dropped from Virtualmin default page.

I actually like having some sort of default page, it helps test and confirm that everything in the chain is working.

Yes, both host default and website default pages are very useful.

1 Like