credit card - wwwa.?

hey guys,

regarding security, what does this mean:

www.mbna.co.uk turns into wwwa.mbna.co.uk, i dont like the extra 'a' letter in the title, could this be a forum of phishing to steal my credit card details?

i use the site all the time, but never noticed the extra letter in the website address before.......

your thoughts?

 

It does not turn into wwwa for me.

Carl

 

it changed to www4 here first time. but when i closed the tab and tryed again it didnt.

 

hmm, i just tried it again and its normal.

whats the meaning of this?

 

A subdomain. It's normal.

Blue

 

why would a subdomain appear as the main website homepage?

anyway, after a few clicks i managed to get it to appear normal, and so i payed my bills

just thought id ask first

 

Read the link, then dig a little deeper.

Blue

 

That is common practice for large businesses (especially financial institutions). The X in wwwX, where X can be anything (i.e. letters, numbers), is usually the designation of a server. That way, they know exactly which server that website is connected to (also helps in troubleshooting).

 

So is this an issue of load balancing?

 

It could be. There are other possibilities too, considering that a large corporation has a complex IT infrastructure.