[dns-operations] "RoadRunner Intercepting Domain Typos" (slashdot)

[Roy Arends]

On Feb 26, 2008, at 11:04 PM, Roy Arends wrote:

> On Feb 26, 2008, at 8:13 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>
>> RoadRunner Intercepting Domain Typos
>>
>> "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
>> functionb  or
>> they can just use OpenDNS. Here is an example RoadRunner results  
>> page.
>
> OpenDNS intercepts failed DNS requests as well, redirecting them to
> OpenDNS own search and advertising platform.  The difference could be
> that OpenDNS users can opt-out of this service, and RoadRunner
> customers might not.

I just got word from some folks in the NY area (customers of  
RoadRunner) that they can opt-out of this redirecting service as well.  
So the service seems to be similar.

Roy