Cox DNS misadventures (was Re: Installfest this Saturday - PLUG website dead?)

[Joseph Sinclair]

If the mistyped url matches a Yahoo search (they submit the URL to Yahoo, along with a lot of extra information, some of which could be tracked back to you), then you get the Yahoo results as well.
On rare occasions I've had it jump right to a "result", which is really irritating.

Steven A. DuChene wrote:
> Yes, but you will notice they call that an "Enhanced Error Results Page"
> so that must be OK!  :-)
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brian Cluff <brian at snaptek.com>
>> Sent: Feb 28, 2010 8:13 PM
>> To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
>> Subject: Re: Installfest this Saturday - PLUG website dead?
>>
>> Your browser should be giving you an address not found message.  If bing 
>> is factoring into it, then your dns is being hijacked, or you have some 
>> sort of plugin that is redirecting your results.
>>
>> Attached is what I get when I try putting in something with a bad address.
>>
>> Brian Cluff
>>
>> On 02/28/2010 03:24 PM, Steve Phariss wrote:
>>> Who does cox redirect to?  I get the bing search page, and if it is not
>>> found (i.e. truely a bad search) then BING gives me a not found page
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Joseph Sinclair
>>> <plug-discussion at stcaz.net <mailto:plug-discussion at stcaz.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Eric Shubert wrote:
>>>      >
>>>      > Could you elaborate about the redirect-failure-to-ads trick? I don't
>>>      > know what you mean by that.
>>>      >
>>>      > Also, do you happen to know if Qwest is also doing this?
>>>      >
>>>      > Thanks again.
>>>
>>>     Most ISP and commercial DNS providers, when a domain name isn't
>>>     found, do not return the mandated a NXDOMAIN response.
>>>     Instead they return the IP address of a server that just dumps a
>>>     page full of ads based on the (presumably mistyped) domain name.
>>>     The immediate problem is that a completely innocent typo can then
>>>     result in ads for almost anything (which can be *really* bad if a
>>>     kid is doing the typing).
>>>
>>>     It's a dirty trick to try to turn DNS into a profit center, and I
>>>     find it completely despicable.
>>>     DNS has to trustworthy or the whole trust model of the net fails,
>>>     and any service that's willing to change NXDOMAIN responses for
>>>     profit could just as easily start redirecting other traffic for even
>>>     more profit (imagine if www.gnu.org <http://www.gnu.org> got
>>>     redirected to a MS anti-FOSS site when accessed from a Windows machine).
>>>
>>>     I don't know if QWest is doing that, but I would be mildly surprised
>>>     if they aren't.
> 
> 
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