RoadRunner Intercepting Domain Typos

shaunco writes "Sometime around midnight on February 26th (at least for the SoCal users), TimeWarner's RoadRunner service started intercepting failed DNS requests, redirecting them to RoadRunner's own search and advertising platform. To see if this has been enabled in your area, try visiting {some random string}.com in your Web browser. This feature subverts user preferences set within browsers, which allow the user to select which search engine receives their typos and invalid domains. RoadRunner users can disable this function — or they can just use OpenDNS. Here is an example RoadRunner results page.

Comments

Good thing I'm with Comcast not TW

[esocid]

They just throttle my connection until it fails.

What's next?

[gtrubetskoy]

http://ww23.rr.com/index.php?origURL=http://www.google.com

Re:What's next?

[MightyYar]

Coooool... you can make them say anything!

Squatting www.jkshdfkljh23sadf.com

[daveywest]

Seems like I should be registering this and pointing it to my porn/phishing site right now.

Would you know the difference?

[Otter]

To see if this has been enabled in your area, try visiting www.jkshdfkljh23sadf.com (or something else random) in your web browser.

Are there failed DNS requests any more? I'd thought every combination of characters had its own ad farm by now. If the last few unused ones now also direct to some random ads, I doubt I'd even notice.

Who clicks on those things, anyway? You land on ebaaaaaay.com when your 'a' key sticks and think "Yes, I do want a beautiful Russian bride!"?

Re:And?

[gEvil (beta)]

Yup. I noticed Verizon doing this a couple months ago. It didn't even cross my mind to submit it as a newsworthy story, though.

QUICK

[p3on]

SOMEONE REGISTER jkshdfkljh23sadf.com AND MAKE IT REDIRECT TO GOATSE

Re:Even happening with Lynx

[orclevegam]

Just tried it in West Hollywood area using lynx as the browser. Even then it is getting diverted to their page. Pretty sneaky. ... you don't really understand how this whole DNS lookup thing works do you?

Re:And?

[moderatorrater]

Let's not forget the .cum TLD; that kind of typo can kill productivity for hours.

And then there was no one left.

[cadeon]

First they came for the news group users,
and I didn't speak up,
because I didn't use news groups.

Then they came for the torrenters,
and I didn't speak up,
because I didn't torrent.

Then they came for the bandwidth hogs,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't on Comcast.

Then they came for my dns,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Re:In the grand scheme of things

[testostertwo]

Well, imagine you were in your car, with your chauffeur.

You ask tell them where you want to go and they say 'OK, sir'.

After half an hour the chauffeur says 'here we are' and you say 'WTF, I asked to go to Spearmint Rhino, why are we at the mall?'

Chauffeur: 'I don't know where Spearmint Rhino is, so I brought you here, you can ask someone or maybe just buy something'.

Time passes whilst you wonder why exactly you're paying this idiot, then someone breaks your window with a mallet and shoves a ton of junk mail through on you.

Re:And?

[thousandinone]

Or 30 seconds for some of us...

Re:OpenDNS Guide

[toleraen]

So what, you didn't opt IN when you signed up for Time Warner in the first place? They just showed up at your house and said "We decided to give you broadband access, that'll be $50"?

Re:OpenDNS Guide

[nschubach]

Really? MSN Search is considered a friendly error message?

Re:OpenDNS Guide

[Phat_Tony]

Well, it's not on Roadrunner in Cleveland yet.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Cleveland's the last place to get everything new.