Topic awaiting preservation: Verisign Hijacks the Web (Page 1 of 1)

This is the most farked up thing.

Verisign has just added a wildcard to top level domains (actually just .com and .net) so that any mistyped URL now goes to a verisign branded search page.

check out www.whatnhdnds.com

The thing about this is that it can make a lot of things harder because now mistyped domains for scripts and such will not time out, instead will return a real page.

Shashdot thread heare



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.


[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 09-16-2003).]

This is really scary.
How can they do that?

Huh? Can you give us a few mistyped URLs to try out? Which URLs has VeriSign hijacked exactly? All of them? Cuz it's not workin'...



[This message has been edited by ozphactor (edited 09-16-2003).]

This is outrageous!
Unbelievable!
Something has to be done...

Not to mention that now, when you try a non-existent address, it will be automatically saved in the recently-visited addresses of the IE address bar...

Man I am really pissed off. They have totally taken control of the not-yet-valid Internet addresses...

Puta que o pariu!

This should effect any .com or .net domain that does not exist. www.asdslkflkdsfoihdsflksdfoidsf.com should do the trick.

It's a relatively new phenomenon and may not be fully propogated yet. I know my work DNS hasn't changed yet but my



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I take it that it hasn't been implemented yet.
www.asdfsadfsadfg.com gives me the same old error page in IE6, and the same old "page not found" dialog in Firebird...

well, that was a stupid thing to say. forget i ever said anything.

[This message has been edited by josh (edited 09-16-2003).]

This is a classic case of bullying. By redirecting all non-existent domains to their "search engine", they have broken a lot of mail filters and created a heaven for spammers. Not to mention that they are also running a mail server, so when you send an e-mail to the wrong address (by accident), it will end at their server and as it is now it will be rejected, but who knows what they are doing in the background (I bet that they will be harvesting all redirects and e-mails in the future, if they are not doing that already).

I just hope that they will be sued by third-party internet registrars and other big companies. Or that IP addresses that they are using for redirection get blacklisted by internet carriers or ISPs...

Try http://www.ozoneaslum.com on for size

It's happening to me. I also tried some gfjklggdfhj.com or somesuch, and that sent me to verisign...

That makes me verrry mad. I do hope someone sues the crapola out of em.

read through the slashdot thread and it seems the protest has begun:

quote:

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The North American Network Operators' Group [nanog.org] has two ongoing threads ('What *are* they smoking' [merit.edu] and 'Change to .com/.net behavior' [merit.edu]) with further discussion on this topic.

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there is also a link to this version of the offensive site.

[edit-fix links]

[This message has been edited by velvetrose (edited 09-16-2003).]

I think that very soon people will try to hack these fellows.... although, until that happens, I think these guys will earn a lot of money selling ads. (I mean, if every person who uses the internet mistypes an adress even only once a day.... imagine the amount of visitors they'll be getting.)



[This message has been edited by mahjqa (edited 09-16-2003).]

My DNS server doesn't seem to be aware of this yet, at least I still get the old 'page not found' message.

I certainly hope they sued pretty soon and are forced to stop this... Those not-valid pages are not supposed to work, they can't change a basic fact like that and get away with it!

Zeldman also has a note of this on his page today...
_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 09-16-2003).]