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Charter Implements SiteFinder-Like DNS
paulbiz writes "Charter Cable's DNS servers have just started resolving all invalid hostnames and pointing them to their own error page. The About page states: 'This service automatically eliminates many of the error pages you may encounter as you surf the web. No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.' It has an 'opt-out' page, but when you use it Charter simply sets a cookie that makes their page redirect errors to Microsoft Live Search instead!" One more reason to use OpenDNS, where you can actually opt out of the custom error page.
That's precisely the reason why I run my own resolver. Also, if I were a customer of those morons, they would get a nice letter demanding to restore their service to proper working or else they'd get no more money.
I've read about various ISPs doing this from time to time, but have any of them actually stuck around for more than a month or so? The stories are usually followed up by a hasty retraction shortly after the launch.
Charter customers (I pity you): make your voice heard!
Although the recommendation to switch to OpenDNS has the same flaws from what I have read. They, too, redirect unknown domains to their "organic search" page. I'm not sure how trees and cows help your search, but I suppose supporting an open, free DNS system is better than letting Charter continue to rake in money at your expense.
Reading things on their faq, like "intercepts phishing attempts" and "corrects typos"
No thanks, I'll just use my work's DNS servers from anywhere I go, since we're not douchebags and don't want to make more income by hijacking other people's surfing.
Also, Earthlink has been doing this for months, which is why I recently replaced the DNS servers that have been burned into my skull since working there in 1998.
I have Charter (who I hate BTW, I had to switch from Comcast to Charter the last time I moved and am now paying more money for worse service), and am still getting the standard "Page Not Found" screen. Of course, I'm running Firefox on a Mac, so . . .
I quit using it months ago. Every time I had to go to their DNS to do a lookup I didn't have cached, the first lookup would timeout every single time. The second lookup would only work about 50%. Last time I checked, they were just as bad as ever. I've pointed several friends to OpenDNS and they were all amazed at the difference. Charter's customer server is horrendous and the only reason they have a market lead in this area is because they have exclusive service in so many apartments and subdivisions.
Everyone who wants a properly working Internet connection, moron.
Did you buy that UID on ebay?
Every customer we set up I add openDNS as the secondary DNS in their router which act's as their DNS server. Granted you can only do this with a decent router or in our case the buffalo router with DD-WRT installed. (every customer has a DD-WRT router as we will only work with our router and not anyone elses)
Comcast is notorius for having their DNS dead and by us adding in a secondary DNS that is not ISP locked it gives them more days without problems than their neighbors.
Any geek that is not running a dd-WRT or a OpenWRT router at home is missing out.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
See their site for more info.
How does OpenDNS make money?
OpenDNS makes money by offering clearly labeled advertisements alongside organic search results when the domain entered is not valid and not a typo we can fix. OpenDNS will provide additional services on top of its enhanced DNS service, and some of them may cost money. Speedy, reliable DNS will always be free.
Do you use your Internet connection for anything other than HTTP? If so, this 'service' could break things for you. If you use FTP, for example, and typo a hostname then instead of getting a 'server not found' error, you will get a 'connection refused' error. This will make it look like the host is up, but the FTP server is broken.
The same is true of pings. If you ping a non-existent host, then instead of being told 'this host does not exist,' you will get ping returns from their server.
This can potentially break a lot of things. On the plus side, since the ISP is now directly manipulating the data flowing over your Internet connection (and violating a few RFCs), it can no longer claim to be a common carrier and is therefore liable for all copyright infringement committed by its subscribers.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not receiving correct DNS error pages is a problem for those that wish to resolve domains.
But to me it's more simple than that. It means misleading the consumer of the cable service. 'The website does not exist' is being changed to 'we're not being up-front that there was a type, misdirected link, etc, we're going to show you adverts instead'.
The Site Finder-like service further reduces the web from a meritocrious system of links and content, to a mess of adverts.
Will cable subscribers' fees be reduced because of this? Probably not.
There's a slippery slope from a (albeit idealistic) system of content and links, to an advertising mess, to outright DNS poisoning (which, living in China, I'm already experiencing - it was a big problem for Google in 2005).
Oh.
The FOSS community should start to pro-actively patent, copyright and trademark anything they can, so no corporation can mess it up.
The problem with this is FOSS rarely innovates. The community is usually playing "follow the leader", and duplicating software that is already available on the commercial market.
I swear I'm not purposely trying to be a negative ass, that's just how it is. 99 percent of FOSS comes in to being because someone wants a free (beer/speech) equivalent to a closed source and costs money commercial package.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I've been looking at different alternatives to the standard root servers and didn't like OpenDNS either as they also change DNS replies.
My search ended with ORSN, a European "backup" of ICANN servers. This way I shouldn't be affected by attacks and outages on ICANN servers.
home
nameserver 151.203.0.85
nameserver 151.202.0.85
nameserver 65.121.99.5
nameserver 65.121.99.6
And rest assured, so far, neither ISP whose nameservers I'm using seems broken at the moment. (The first two are Verizon, the last two are Coffeynet)
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Well... It's Charter's network, so I guess they can do what they want, eh?
That depends on how they are selling it. Would that argument hold up if they were blocking http traffic from comcast.com, verizon.com, etc?
Accurate DNS would probably be an assumed necessity for consumer-level "internet access". If they are actively and intentionally shipping bogus DNS info, there could be some opportunity for lawyers to get some billable hours in.
Earthlink still has their version Sitefinder. Charter will likely continue with this bad idea. Others will likely follow.
At least Earthlink offers "opt out servers" that function properly.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I have Charter, and this annoys me to no end. I simply added www11.charter.net (the website they're currently redirecting me to) to my hosts file, so I get an "Unable to connect" message. It's not perfect, but it at least gives me a somewhat meaningful error.
1. Non-Telco-ISPs and cable companies are not, and never have been, Common Carriers
2. Non-Telco-ISPs and cable companies DO NOT WANT TO BE common carriers.
3. ISPs are protected by the Good Samaritan provisions of the Communications Decency Act. THIS is what protects them from liability, NOT common carrier status.
If you think that's bad, see what my isp (netcabo, Portugal) is doing:
Every now and then when they want to send me a message (e.g. to tell me about "special offers" or whatever), they intercept one of my http requests and reply with a redirect to a page on their website, with the oh-so-important message and a link to the page I had asked for.
Needless to say that scripts that automatically parse web pages get confused.
They can do what they want after they've dropped out of the exclusive franchising agreement they have with my city. Until then, they enjoy government protection from market competition, and they should be subject strict oversight to prevent them from taking advantage of their monopoly entitlement to harm consumers.
I talked to their tech support a few days ago about this shadiness. He had no idea this was going on, and rightfully thought it was a malware/spyware problem at first, until I explained a little more clearly what was going on, and he did some poking around and found other blog and forum posts about this. He seemed somewhat surprised that Charter would engage in such a practice and that no one had been told about it.
He was talking with level 2 support while he was on with me and said that they just kept telling him it was probably malware/spyware. Hilarious that they at least see it that way too, but sad that their company pulls this shit on them without telling anyone first. I asked him for a followup, he said he'd pass it along to level 2, I gave him my email address, and that was that. I don't exactly expect to ever hear back from them, so I'll probably have to make a stink at a city Cable Board meeting to get any response.
In the meantime, I hope other folks out there start repeatedly and publicly asking Charter:
- Were they ever going to make an announcement/disclosure to allow customers to opt-out, or at least tell their staff about it?
- Will they provide options for customers who don't allow or regularly clear cookies, such as a non-redirecting DNS?
- Why were they pointing people towards http://optin.charter.net/ , which doesn't exist?
- How much information do they gather about visitors to their link farm?
- Is there a third-party involved providing Charter the redirect (like Barefruit did for Earthlink?)
- How much money are they making from their link farm affiliates?
- Most importantly, do we have any guarantees that they aren't redirecting or degrading other network traffic?
In the meantime, I've switched my DNS over to Level3 (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3).
> The problem with this is FOSS rarely innovates.
Come on, you can do better.
Take for example the GNU-tools who spread on most Unices because they were _better_ than their CS-counterparts.
Besides that the whole internet was built on (natural) FOSS.
And then companys with an innovative image (read apple) litterally build on FOSS.
It's just that most software is rarely innovative and FOSS is no exception to that.
I noticed this last night, called to complain about it, and spent over an hour on the phone with their tech support. First I had to convince them it was really happening and it was a change to their DNS, it wasn't some browser setting I had ``accidentally'' changed. So they apparently made this change without letting their 1st and 2nd level support know about it.
Then once I got high enough, they tried to weasel out of it with their lame opt-out solution, which even if it worked wouldn't help when I'm making non-browser-based connections. So I guess they want all of my typo'd telnet, ssh, ftp and ping commands to hit their search server instead?
At the end, I asked to be transferred to account services to cancel (gosh I hope Bell doesn't pull the same shit in a month), and the admittedly very understanding engineer begged for a day to look into a way to completely remove the feature from my account. So I'll be calling back tonight.
"'The website does not exist' is being changed to 'we're not being up-front that there was a type, misdirected link, etc, we're going to show you adverts instead'."
A typo of "typo". Oh, the irony.
I'm not surprised ISPs are doing this. More will be doing this. What does surprise me is how ISPs try to do this silently and behind closed-door without informing their customers, or even their tech support in some cases.
Think about it this way: Any change an ISP makes that results in 1% (or more) of their customer base calling in for technical support is a cost nightmare. Customer Service is a (*the*) major cost center for ISPs. I guess we have to imagine that they are making more money than the pain of doing the customer service is costing them.
The other thing that surprises me (and obviously I'm biased since I run OpenDNS) is that the search results page linked above is 100% ad-driven. There are no no organic search results for my typo (as far as I can tell). Moreover, when I click on a category to "refine" my results they totally remove the typo'd domain that I had there in the first place instead just giving me generic ads for a category (which is a mediocre CPC on their side) and a crappy search experience on the user side. There is absolutely no user-benefit to what Charter has done here.
I'm proud to say that our page is getting better and better every single day. Compare and contrast. Not only that, but we're driving more and more innovation in both user navigation and fundamental DNS operations. These things go hand in hand. Fundamentally the DNS is about navigation. It's about helping users get where they are trying to go. That's exactly what we intend to help our users do. We know that the changes we have made to how our DNS servers operate aren't for every user which is why we are so clear about how our system works and is why make sure we can manage account settings on a per IP basis (CIDR-style preferences down to
As usual, I'm happy to answer questions where I can.
-david ulevitch
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Phishers change their websites faster than some people I know change their clothes.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And now we're back where we started, with our provider's DNS servers responding with A records for non-existing domains.