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Remember that time when VeriSign did this (wildcarding) on a global basis for .com and .net in 2003, briefly causing outrage? "As of a little while ago (it is
by theoh 9y ago
Remember that time when VeriSign did this (wildcarding) on a global basis for .com and .net in 2003, briefly causing outrage?
"As of a little while ago (it is around 7:45 PM US Eastern on Mon 15 Sep 2003 as I write this), VeriSign added a wildcard A record to the .COM and .NET TLD DNS zones. The IP address returned is 64.94.110.11, which reverses to sitefinder.verisign.com. What that means in plain English is that most mis-typed domain names that would formerly have resulted in a helpful error message now results in a VeriSign advertising opportunity. For example, if my domain name was 'somecompany.com,' and somebody typed 'soemcompany.com' by mistake, they would get VeriSign's advertising."
https://m.slashdot.org/story/38665 https://m.slashdot.org/story/38665
- kuschku 9y agoEven today, T-Mobile still does that – any domains that can not be resolved are redirected to their ads.
- mikeash 9y agoVerizon does it too, although they just show search results and don't show ads. It's possible to opt out, but it hasn't bothered me enough to do that yet.
- theoh 9y agoBut VeriSign is not an ISP -- they were the ones running the authoritative root name servers and doing this to literally everyone.