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VeriSign Responds To ICANN's SiteFinder Advisory
dmehus writes "VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services division has written to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey regarding the recent advisory concerning VeriSign's DNS wildcard redirection service. In the letter, VeriSign's Rusty Lewis says that they are open to independent and objective technical concerns expressed by various Internet bodies; they have formed their own "independent" panel of industry leading experts to produce its own, separate report; and they will not voluntarily suspend SiteFinder. It's a very terse response, and frankly, I'd have expected more from them. Slashdot readers are encouraged to visit ICANNWatch for in-depth, expert discussion on this and other issues."
Something that seems to be mildly overlooked here, in my opinion, is that this has the power to give VeriSign "ownership" of the web in many users' minds.
If my mom tries to go to http://www.gooodhousekeeping.com and gets a VeriSign message and a search box, well it doesn't take much of that before she starts thinking that VeriSign == The WWW, because VeriSign is who always tells her what she typed wrong and where she should be going.
What this comes down to is a company trying to "brand" the web. In many ways, Google has been successful at this, but they have actually played fair and achieved what they have on the basis of merit. VeriSign is ABUSING their power to brand the web as their own.
It should be patently obvious by now that VeriSign's modus operandi is one of deceit and trickery. Evidence the fake "renewal" cards they have sent out in the past to "slam" DNS registrants much like the shady phone companies have tried to do with your long-distance.
Damn, it's ridiculous that people even try to get away with this sort of crap these days...will someone with the power to please stop this?
21 September 2003
.com and .net zones. This was done after many months of testing and analysis and in compliance with all applicable technical standards. All indications are that users, important members of the internet community we all serve, are benefiting from the improved web navigation offered by Site Finder. These results are consistent with the findings from the extensive research we performed.
VIA E-MAIL &
VIA FASILMILE (310) 823-8649
Paul Twomey
President and CEO
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601
Re: ICANN Advisory Concerning VeriSign's Deployment of DNS Wildcard Service dated 19 September 2003
Dear Paul:
This will respond to the ICANN Advisory concerning VeriSign's Deployment of DNS Wildcard Service dated 19 September 2003. In the footsteps of several other registries that have done the same, we recently deployed a wildcard in the
We are, of course, very interested in any objective technical information ICANN may have received concerning the service and would welcome the opportunity to work with you to review such data. To that end, we have reached out to schedule meetings with ICANN's Chairman, Vint Cerf, and the Chairman of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, Steve Crocker, to exchange information regarding issues that may be encountered in the community. We have also formed an independent technical review panel to gather and analyze data for the purpose of assessing any operational impact of our wildcard implementation. The technical review panel will consist of leading experts in the field.
As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data. After completing an assessment of any operational impact of our wildcard implementation, we will take any appropriate steps necessary.
I look forward to continuing to work with you on this issue.
Best Regards,
Russell Lewis
Executive Vice President, General Manager
VeriSign Naming and Directory Services