On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Joseph Sinclair <plug-discussion@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 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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