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Verisign To Sell DNS Root Server Lookup Data?

Posted by kdawson on from the oh-goodie-more-trash-domains dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to an editorial at Domain Name News, Verisign is considering selling partial access to DNS root server lookup data. The data would be made available to registrars, who in turn could use it for 'traffic-tasting' non-existent domains entered by any internet user. This would give them a better idea about what bogus domains to put up sites on to capture eyeballs." Haven't seen this story elsewhere and it's based on an anonymous source; YMMV.

5 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. I bet they've been doing this for years by sqrammi · · Score: 3, Informative

    I personally am very against something like this. I've heard of several people just typing a domain name into Internet Explorer, seeing that it didn't exist, and then moments later trying to register the domain only to find that it was just barely registered by some registrar. Of course in these cases, Microsoft or possibly some spyware company was the culprit, but I'd hate for this information to be more quickly and widely available. I can't see how anyone would be OK with this.

  2. Re:I'm rather doubtful about how useful that would by jours · · Score: 4, Informative

    > it doesn't seem like many requests would actually be getting through

    When the caching server misses on a request, it forwards the request upstream...ultimately ending up at one of the root servers.

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  3. Mod parent up. by khasim · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you're in a corporate office with a correctly configured caching DNS box, the spelling errors should outnumber the correctly entered queries. As seen from the root servers.

    That is because every spelling error must be sent upstream while just about every correctly entered query should be cached locally.

  4. Re:Mod parent up ^2 by Kalriath · · Score: 3, Informative

    Doesn't matter. Verisign is the authority for .com and .net, any request for domains ending in one of those suffixes needs to be queried against Verisign at some point.

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  5. Re:Remove ability to "taste" domains? by trolltalk.com · · Score: 3, Informative

    It was probably this one:

    Domain Name: BANKOFARNERICA.COM
    Registrar: MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC.
    Whois Server: whois.moniker.com
    Referral URL: http://www.moniker.com/whois.html
    Name Server: PNS1.TRELLIAN.COM
    Name Server: PNS2.TRELLIAN.COM
    Status: clientDeleteProhibited
    Status: clientTransferProhibited
    Status: clientUpdateProhibited
    Updated Date: 06-sep-2007
    Creation Date: 06-sep-2007
    Expiration Date: 06-sep-2008

    Putting the lower-case 'r' and 'n' side by side looks just like an m.

    http://bankofarnerica.com/ A-R-N-erica == evil phishing site!
    http://bankofamerica.com/ A-M-erica == real bank site.

    mouse over them both, and see how easy it is to misread the url in the status bar.

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