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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. So? by Stealth+Dave · · Score: 0, Troll

    I realize that Time Warner Cable is a Big Evil Corporation(TM), but what's the big deal here? So you type in a domain that does not exist and they give you search results based on that domain. "But they're serving ads, those money-grubbing evil-doers!" Guess what: search engines serve ads! It's true! But let's say you don't want your DNS server sending you ads. That's a reasonable request, since you're already paying for the service. I guess you can just turn them off like the post suggests!

    I don't think that the sky is falling just yet on this one.

    - Stealth Dave

    --
    Evil is as eval("does");
  2. Re:OpenDNS Guide by bogeyjlg · · Score: 0, Troll

    Mod me down. Someone beat me to the punch.