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RoadRunner Intercepting Domain Typos

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the following-in-the-footsteps-of-netsol dept.

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.

10 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Good thing I'm with Comcast not TW by esocid · · Score: 4, Funny

    They just throttle my connection until it fails.

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    Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
  2. What's next? by gtrubetskoy · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    1. Re:What's next? by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Funny

      Coooool... you can make them say anything!

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      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Squatting www.jkshdfkljh23sadf.com by daveywest · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. Would you know the difference? by Otter · · Score: 3, Funny
    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!"?

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  5. Re:Even happening with Lynx by orclevegam · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?
    --
    Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
  6. Re:And? by moderatorrater · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  7. Re:And? by thousandinone · · Score: 3, Funny

    Or 30 seconds for some of us...

  8. Re:OpenDNS Guide by nschubach · · Score: 4, Funny

    Really? MSN Search is considered a friendly error message?

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    Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  9. Re:OpenDNS Guide by Phat_Tony · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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

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