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Mint packages browsers to make money off of them, including the very questionable use of OpenDNS advertising pages as fallbacks for hostnames that are not found
by guelo 13y ago
Mint packages browsers to make money off of them, including the very questionable use of OpenDNS advertising pages as fallbacks for hostnames that are not found.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pallandt 13y agoI haven't used this distribution, but is it not possible to just change your namservers to Google's for example, or the ones provided by your ISP? The way you put it makes it sound like you're locked into using OpenDNS. I have used OpenDNS before and while I didn't like their ads in place of not found hostnames, it is part of their revenue model and they have to make something back for what they provide. It seems a reasonable exchange for a free service. I presume LinuxMint has some sort of partnership with them, but I don't see this as being evil, considering they also would probably want to make some money off their custom distro/work they put into it.
- pserwylo 13y agoI feel the same about this as with the Ubuntu affliate-link issue: I appreciate the work that distro maintainers put in, and I understand that many would like to earn revenue somehow from the distribution. If you give us the option to opt-in, then I'm fine with that being part of your revenue model. The fact that people have the option to disable a feature doesn't make it any less sneaky or inappropriate to put in (in my opinion).
- pallandt 13y agoThe issue you mentioned is indeed quite sneaky, but getting a page full of ads when mistyping a domain name for example is very 'in your face' I'd say. I don't really understand how it could be interpreted as 'sneaky'. I think what truly might be bothering people is the fact that someone out there is just trying to profit off of them, some through less/more sleazy ways than others.
- eksith 13y agoConsidering my ISP does the same, I'd say that's a minor inconvenience. I mean it's not like searching the desktop will send results to Amazon et al. I'm wiling to tolerate that just to not have to put up with Unity malarkey. Besides that (though I haven't tried 15 yet), I was able to dual boot 14 on my old Dell Inspiron 8200 and use it as an OK browsing rig. This was intolerable with Ubuntu.
- pserwylo 13y ago> it's not like searching the desktop will send results to Amazon et al. But it is similar - if you use web applications in your every day life, then a misspelling may well send your misspelled info to Amazon, if they advertise through OpenDNS (though I'm unfamiliar with how OpenDNS works).
- eksith 13y agoHere's some info on their advertising : http://www.opendns.com/support/article/76 http://www.opendns.com/support/article/76
- hackula1 13y agoCan you not trivially turn off dns hijacking?
- duaneb 13y agoI imagine you would just swap out the name server IP.
- DeuceDaily 13y agoRight! Isn't this "Hacker" News? I personally am offended that I didn't have to recompile to change my dns servers.
- voltagex_ 13y agoIt's a little troubling for me that people crucified Canonical about the use of the Amazon search "lens" but there's not a peep about this.