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EarthLink Establishes Their Own "Site Finder"
Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."
- A box showing suggested search terms
- A box in which I could search (through Yahoo!) for my page.
- Two banner ads.
When I enter in a term, say 'guitar', I get a page with yet more ads and sponsored links but still directed through earthlink help to Yahoo!I wasn't born yesterday, I understand the concepts of paid search, sponsored links & banner ads. They generate revenue and insult me. They waste real estate on websites and obscure my information that I would prefer to harvest un assaulted by sales pitches.
I'm betting I'm not the first to say this, but this is insane.
If they wanted to be 'helpful' they would provide you with some sort of new service. In this solution, they are simply deciding which search engine you will use and cashing in off of it also. If we want to search for another answer, I think we know where to go. If you doubt our abilities to select a preferred search engine, at least give us some choices. Do you know what happens in Firefox when I pull down the search engine on the upper right? I can select from a number of sites.
You're not improving anything, you're laughing all the way to the bank.
My work here is dung.
Earthlink subscribers can opt by not being Earthlink subscribers any longer. When Verisign did it, it affected everyone because they've been granted a monopoly on certain domain extensions.
Simple. Continue to use Earthlink, but don't use their DNS. Just run your own dns server locally. Or, point to another open dns server.
This is not about the unix way or the apple way. This is about the Computer Science way: returning an error when an error occurs. Dealing with the error is an user agent, not an ISP responsibility. Earthlink should have made this opt-in (they can spare a coupe IPs for a couple more DNS servers, can't they). I run PPC linux and mac on linux over it occasionally, so I know what you probably meant, it still does not apply here.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The place for offering "help" in the user interface is in the client software. Perhaps the DNS error needs a metadata field for offering messages, perhaps hyperlinked, for exception handling. But those must be presented by the user agent, like the browser, not tricking the browser into "passthru" to server misdirection. That violates the DNS specs. And makes that essential global system vulnerable to unpredicted failures when dependant systems get nonstandard results.
These ISPs attract marketing people with dreams of empire and ignorance of Internet. Execs put them in power over the engineers, and just rip across the careful system designs that make the Net work. Then they cry when their stuff doesn't work, and blame the engineers.
But they compete with each other on how well their stuff works. As long as we can switch ISPs among a pool with critical mass size, they'll exploit each others' weaknesses to grab customers. These "DNS hijacks" are going to be with us forever, avoidable only while we have a choice between independent, competing ISPs.
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make install -not war
Earthlink aren't providing meaningful information to customers - they're just trying to make money.
Of course, that's what businesses are for, so as you say, if they want to do it, they should be entirely entitled to do so. However:
a) It's not fair on those who have paid for an existing service to have the nature of this service changed on them without warning - many people feel they are now getting a poorer service.
b) They should at the very least have provided an opt-out system for those who prefer untainted DNS that works in the way the internet standards require it to work. Then people with firewall, anti-spam or other systems that this change breaks wouldn't be so up in arms.
If my ISP did this, I'd leave them. Luckily my ISP is more sane.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Or we get a recording "doo-dah-dee. We're sorry - the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again."
We don't get "This recording is sponsored by Gromyko's Widget Works of Belle PPlain, Wisconsin, North American Wireless, and Joe's Pizza. You have dialed 555-1234. If you meant 554-1234, Smith, John, press 1, if you meant 556-1234, Mierzwiak, James, press 2, or if you meant 555-2233, Yung, M., press 3?"
Not to give the phone company ideas or anything :/
-b.
Cool, so you wont mind folks redirecting all the wonderful new mountains of spam to your server which now gets through because forged bogus sending domains now resolve. There is a reason you dont fuck with the naming service...