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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.

2 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. I KNEW IT! by ILuvRamen · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I knew when I first saw a road runner branded "typo ad page" that they were doing it. In fact I actually thought "I'm gonna read about this one on slashdot!" First of all the date is all wrong. They've been doing it for over a week in Wisconsin. Secondly, I'll do you one better. Any time a combined bittorrent upload of mine exceeds 30 KBPS, my modem mysteriously jams up. And also I've done over 100 GB of torrent traffic up and down. Mostly Knoppix and other legal stuff but not all. And about 2 months ago my download speed became capped at about 1500 kbps instead of the new 8000 or whatever they just upped it to. If I use a multi-source downloader like leechget, I can get the full 850 kBps from a good server. Also even at like 2 AM it's the exact same limit so it's not just traffic. So they seem to be throttling me on purpose. That's right, I'm breaking that story right here right now. In fact I've been meaning to call them about it...brb

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    Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
  2. Re:What's next? by DeadChobi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Fukken Saved!

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    SRSLY.