Little6pack
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2002
- Messages
- 11,676
VeriSign has sunk to a new low.
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.
(VeriSign is a company which purchased Network Solutions, another company
which was given the task by the US government of running the .COM and .NET
top-level domains (TLDs). VeriSign has been exploiting the Internet's DNS
infrastructure ever since.)
This will have the immediate effect of making network trouble-shooting
much more difficult. Before, a mis-typed domain name in an email address,
web browser, or other network configuration item would result in an obvious
error message. You might not have known what to do about it, but at least
you knew something was wrong. Now, though, you will have to guess. Every
time.
Some have pointed out that this will make an important anti-spam check
impossible. A common anti-spam measure is to check and make sure the domain
name of the sender really exists. (While this is easy to force, every
little bit helps.) Since all .COM and .NET domain names now exist, that
anti-spam check is useless.
VeriSign's commentary:
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/implementation.pdf
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/bestpractices.pdf
Third-party reference:
http://www.cbronline.com/latestnews/d04afc52ae9da2ee80256d9c0018be8b
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.
(VeriSign is a company which purchased Network Solutions, another company
which was given the task by the US government of running the .COM and .NET
top-level domains (TLDs). VeriSign has been exploiting the Internet's DNS
infrastructure ever since.)
This will have the immediate effect of making network trouble-shooting
much more difficult. Before, a mis-typed domain name in an email address,
web browser, or other network configuration item would result in an obvious
error message. You might not have known what to do about it, but at least
you knew something was wrong. Now, though, you will have to guess. Every
time.
Some have pointed out that this will make an important anti-spam check
impossible. A common anti-spam measure is to check and make sure the domain
name of the sender really exists. (While this is easy to force, every
little bit helps.) Since all .COM and .NET domain names now exist, that
anti-spam check is useless.
VeriSign's commentary:
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/implementation.pdf
http://www.verisign.com/resources/gd/sitefinder/bestpractices.pdf
Third-party reference:
http://www.cbronline.com/latestnews/d04afc52ae9da2ee80256d9c0018be8b
