The IP address we are given, are they 'new'? I have noticed that several different hostnames duplicate my website.

On investigation, it appears that the hostnames resolve to my IP address. The contact name for (one of) the hostname(s) claims that they were a client-site which has gone out of business.

Can anyone explain what is going on here? Are the IP addresses we are given recycled and possibly in (some sort of use) elsewhere?

The IP address assigned to you could have been recycled from a former Linode customer (who cancelled their account), but you are the only one currently using it.

If old names still resolve to your IP address, I would suggest putting a catch-all virtual host in your webserver configuration so that they know that the site they are trying to reach no longer exists.

It might not necessarily even be from a former customer. It could be a current one who's now migrated to another server. Although in that case I'd imagine they'd pay more attention to their DNS.

It's also possible that it dates back to a time before the block was assigned to linode. Linode's business has grown pretty rapidly, I'm guessing they're not still using only their initial allotment of IP space. :)

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Ed/Bones.