Charter Implements SiteFinder-Like DNS 206
paulbiz writes "Charter Cable's DNS servers have just started resolving all invalid hostnames and pointing them to their own error page. The About page states: 'This service automatically eliminates many of the error pages you may encounter as you surf the web. No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.' It has an 'opt-out' page, but when you use it Charter simply sets a cookie that makes their page redirect errors to Microsoft Live Search instead!" One more reason to use OpenDNS, where you can actually opt out of the custom error page.
Run your own DNS resolver! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Not true! When I got my sun3/260 (long since gone, although I did upgrade it to a 4/260 while I still had it) I installed SunOS 4.1.1 on it, as it was the latest and greatest that you could even get on there. It came with TCP/IP but the resolver was not linked in! I actually had to link the DNS resolver into libc (IIRC) before I could use DNS. But I could still access things by IP, and actually did so.
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Re:Run your own DNS resolver! (Score:5, Informative)
So running your own resolver on a Charter line probably will basically mean no DNS.
Re:Run your own DNS resolver! (Score:4, Informative)
This might be the case in certain areas, but in my neck of the woods, I'm able to use DNS servers other than standard Charter DNS resolvers just fine.
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Your revision 8 Intel Ethernet Pro 100 card is showing.
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If you really don't trust your ISP to not read your mail then using your own server is not enough--they (or anyone else whoses systems your mail goes through) can use something like tcpdump to capture all your mail and other traffic.
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Have any of these survived? (Score:5, Insightful)
Charter customers (I pity you): make your voice heard!
Although the recommendation to switch to OpenDNS has the same flaws from what I have read. They, too, redirect unknown domains to their "organic search" page. I'm not sure how trees and cows help your search, but I suppose supporting an open, free DNS system is better than letting Charter continue to rake in money at your expense.
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You, sir, are not using your brain.
From the OpenDNS FAQ [opendns.com]:
In fact you can turn those "features" off. You have to opt-out, which means you have to register.
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WideOpenWest has been doing this since at least November, and it's still going on. On the up side, they have a link where you can opt out of it. On the down side, the page has javascript errors in firefox, and when you use it in IE it doesn't seem to do anything (a week later it's still giving their stupid DNS error page).
Re:Have any of these survived? (Score:5, Informative)
As a frequently-disgruntled Charter customer, I was given a golden ticket. I feel obliged to share it:
Charter Corporate Complaint Line: 314-288-3150
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I have a feeling (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt it (Score:4, Interesting)
At least Earthlink offers "opt out servers [earthlink.net]" that function properly.
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opendns? over my dead... (Score:5, Interesting)
No thanks, I'll just use my work's DNS servers from anywhere I go, since we're not douchebags and don't want to make more income by hijacking other people's surfing.
Also, Earthlink has been doing this for months, which is why I recently replaced the DNS servers that have been burned into my skull since working there in 1998.
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No thanks, I'll just use my work's DNS servers from anywhere I go, since we're not douchebags and don't want to make more income by hijacking other people's surfing.
If you are able to do this, your work's DNS servers are misconfigured. A quick Google search [google.com] leads you to this informative article [derkeiler.com] about the problem and what to do about it.
Oh, and why your work DNS servers are misconfigured, threatening the safety of MY Internet connection...
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Not working for me. (Score:2, Informative)
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So DNS doesn't work? If their system is working as they intended, you'll get redirected no matter what browser you run on what platform.
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It gives you a choice to "opt out", but that can only work for www browsers, since it relies on cookies. So, any other apps making network connections are subject to their redirections.
I hope there will be enough customer pushback to get this reversed. But, I'm not sure there will be. Most users won't realize what's happening. And, I personally don't have any other broadband options.. it's
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Issue? (Score:2)
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That depends on how they are selling it. Would that argument hold up if they were blocking http traffic from comcast.com, verizon.com, etc?
Accurate DNS would probably be an assumed necessity for consumer-level "internet access". If they are actively and intentionally shipping bogus DNS info, there could be some opportunity for lawyers to get some billable hours in.
Re:Issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
They can do what they want after they've dropped out of the exclusive franchising agreement they have with my city. Until then, they enjoy government protection from market competition, and they should be subject strict oversight to prevent them from taking advantage of their monopoly entitlement to harm consumers.
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It's not like their DNS was worth using anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually openDNS is a good idea. (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast is notorius for having their DNS dead and by us adding in a secondary DNS that is not ISP locked it gives them more days without problems than their neighbors.
Any geek that is not running a dd-WRT or a OpenWRT router at home is missing out.
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If you have your own DNS... (Score:4, Informative)
See their site [isc.org] for more info.
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When DNS fails to resolve, many browsers decide not to clutter your history with the bogus URL. Now if everything "successfully" resolves to some craptacular (Comcastic?) filler page that particular excellent feature will be useless. Nothing like helping your users by turning valid error messages into artificial successes... At least it will cut back o
An academic, not practical, complaint (Score:2)
The only time its even noticable is when doing a traceroute with name resolution, and even then I'm surprised at how fast most names resolve.
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And this is different to OpenDNS how? (Score:4, Informative)
OpenDNS makes money by offering clearly labeled advertisements alongside organic search results when the domain entered is not valid and not a typo we can fix. OpenDNS will provide additional services on top of its enhanced DNS service, and some of them may cost money. Speedy, reliable DNS will always be free.
Re:And this is different to OpenDNS how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, DNS is understood to be an integral part of the services provided by an ISP. Its cost has always been included in your monthly fee. It's highly unlikely that any ISP is going to drop monthly rates because of this ad revenue, so this action is essentially just another rate hike. Nothing about your
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Standard? (Score:2)
It's becoming increasingly clear that, in order to protect the internet from the greedy hands of corporations, we need to adopt their tactics; patent the DNS standard and trademark the "DNS" label, so nobody can mangle it and still cl
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The problem with this is FOSS rarely innovates. The community is usually playing "follow the leader", and duplicating software that is already available on the commercial market.
I swear I'm not purposely trying to be a negative ass, that's just how it is. 99 percent of FOSS comes in to being because someone wants a free (beer/speech) equivalent to a closed source and costs mo
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Come on, you can do better.
Take for example the GNU-tools who spread on most Unices because they were _better_ than their CS-counterparts.
Besides that the whole internet was built on (natural) FOSS.
And then companys with an innovative image (read apple) litterally build on FOSS.
It's just that most software is rarely innovative and FOSS is no exception to that.
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The GNU toolchain (or userland, I can't tell which you're talking about, but this applies equally well) is an example of evolution, not revolution. First they implemented precisely the same functionality as the programs they were replacing. Then they added more functionality, and became the dominant force. However, las
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But I can give you that, as most people do not even think about it as "software". Certainly I agree that FOSS things that resemble boxed software are copies. But your cheap shot that the reason is that the writers want it for "free" is obviously bogus.
It is plenty obvious that about 80% of the desire to copy commercial software is to make a version that works on Linux.
About 15% of
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As opposed to the commercial software industry, which you can hardly STOP from innovating...
Give me a break. 99% of software out there was copied from something else, with trivial improvements, be it commercial, or Open Source. Or did you think Microsoft invented the Word Processor, and Spreadsheet?
IMHO, at the end of the day, OSS is innovating much more than the commercial software industry. Copying of ideas goes both ways.
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They have dealt with this in ISCs BIND. You can add:
zone "COM" {type delegation-only; };
zone "NET" {type delegation-only; };
to your named.conf file to allow only the "correct" servers to respond.
As far as copyright/patent/trademarking that is the what the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project try to do. MS does this to, AD is part of their process of "embracing and extending" "core internet protocols" (see the Halloween docments). DNS is tightly integrated in AD and
We could do better than that... (Score:2)
We'd need to trademark words like "Internet" and "World Wide Web" and related terms that people understand. That way, no one could legally claim to have a website if it required Flash to run, and no one could legally claim to be an ISP unless they provided, at the bare mininum, DHCP and normal, functioning DNS.
Unfortunately, it's a pipe dream. These words are pretty much public domain now, and the public has an understanding of it. I bet you could still make a court case
ORSN is better. (Score:5, Interesting)
My search ended with ORSN [orsn.net], a European "backup" of ICANN servers. This way I shouldn't be affected by attacks and outages on ICANN servers.
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My DNS settings (Score:2, Informative)
nameserver 151.202.0.85
nameserver 65.121.99.5
nameserver 65.121.99.6
And rest assured, so far, neither ISP whose nameservers I'm using seems broken at the moment. (The first two are Verizon, the last two are Coffeynet)
-uso.
Hosts file (Score:4, Interesting)
Waiting to hear back from them... (Score:3, Informative)
He was talking with level 2 support while he was on with me and said that they just kept telling him it was probably malware/spyware. Hilarious that they at least see it that way too, but sad that their company pulls this shit on them without telling anyone first. I asked him for a followup, he said he'd pass it along to level 2, I gave him my email address, and that was that. I don't exactly expect to ever hear back from them, so I'll probably have to make a stink at a city Cable Board meeting to get any response.
In the meantime, I hope other folks out there start repeatedly and publicly asking Charter:
- Were they ever going to make an announcement/disclosure to allow customers to opt-out, or at least tell their staff about it?
- Will they provide options for customers who don't allow or regularly clear cookies, such as a non-redirecting DNS?
- Why were they pointing people towards http://optin.charter.net/ [charter.net] , which doesn't exist?
- How much information do they gather about visitors to their link farm?
- Is there a third-party involved providing Charter the redirect (like Barefruit did for Earthlink?)
- How much money are they making from their link farm affiliates?
- Most importantly, do we have any guarantees that they aren't redirecting or degrading other network traffic?
In the meantime, I've switched my DNS over to Level3 (4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3).
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What? WHAT? You are absolutely insane.
For correct operation, software depends on getting accurate responses back from DNS queries. If you get back a response from this service, instead of getting an error, you get the wrong webpage. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior and in violation of the ap
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I'll leave it to someone else to disassemble your retarded spamfilter example.
rolled out w/o letting their support know (Score:5, Interesting)
Then once I got high enough, they tried to weasel out of it with their lame opt-out solution, which even if it worked wouldn't help when I'm making non-browser-based connections. So I guess they want all of my typo'd telnet, ssh, ftp and ping commands to hit their search server instead?
At the end, I asked to be transferred to account services to cancel (gosh I hope Bell doesn't pull the same shit in a month), and the admittedly very understanding engineer begged for a day to look into a way to completely remove the feature from my account. So I'll be calling back tonight.
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openDNS to weird comcast router (Score:2)
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However just because it has "open" in the name doesn't mean it's any better than anything else. Just run your own DNS. It's easy, free, fast, and doesn't pull any of this crap.
This is getting common (Score:2)
Customer notification and experience... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not surprised ISPs are doing this. More will be doing this. What does surprise me is how ISPs try to do this silently and behind closed-door without informing their customers, or even their tech support in some cases.
Think about it this way: Any change an ISP makes that results in 1% (or more) of their customer base calling in for technical support is a cost nightmare. Customer Service is a (*the*) major cost center for ISPs. I guess we have to imagine that they are making more money than the pain of doing the customer service is costing them.
The other thing that surprises me (and obviously I'm biased since I run OpenDNS) is that the search results page linked above is 100% ad-driven. There are no no organic search results for my typo (as far as I can tell). Moreover, when I click on a category to "refine" my results they totally remove the typo'd domain that I had there in the first place instead just giving me generic ads for a category (which is a mediocre CPC on their side) and a crappy search experience on the user side. There is absolutely no user-benefit to what Charter has done here.
I'm proud to say that our page [opendns.com] is getting better and better every single day. Compare [opendns.com] and contrast [charter.net]. Not only that, but we're driving more and more innovation in both user navigation and fundamental DNS operations. These things go hand in hand. Fundamentally the DNS is about navigation. It's about helping users get where they are trying to go. That's exactly what we intend to help our users do. We know that the changes we have made to how our DNS servers operate aren't for every user which is why we are so clear about how our system works and is why make sure we can manage account settings on a per IP basis (CIDR-style preferences down to
As usual, I'm happy to answer questions where I can.
-david ulevitch
Pointing them to their own error page? (Score:2)
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OpenDNS? What's Open about it? (Score:2)
Just because it says "open" at the front it's better? What makes it open? It looks closed to me. It's run as a for profit company, and if you want any control over it you have to give them personal data.
I hate it (Score:2)
What pisses me off the most is that if I click "opt out", further redirects go to live.com. It's a fake opt-out. There is no opt-out.
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Not seeing this in Saginaw on Charter (Score:2)
I had not heard that ISPs are starting to do this... If so we'll have to do some investigation. We
Fucked from both ends. (Score:2)
The most damning part is that "opting-out" just forwards you to "Windows Live" instead, which is obviously an attempt to pretend that they aren't doing what they're doing by doing what Internet Explorer would do anyway. Fuck you, Charter.
MOD PARENT TROLL (Score:2, Funny)
Did you buy that UID on ebay?
Re:Pretty Confusing (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you use your Internet connection for anything other than HTTP? If so, this 'service' could break things for you. If you use FTP, for example, and typo a hostname then instead of getting a 'server not found' error, you will get a 'connection refused' error. This will make it look like the host is up, but the FTP server is broken.
The same is true of pings. If you ping a non-existent host, then instead of being told 'this host does not exist,' you will get ping returns from their server.
This can potentially break a lot of things. On the plus side, since the ISP is now directly manipulating the data flowing over your Internet connection (and violating a few RFCs), it can no longer claim to be a common carrier and is therefore liable for all copyright infringement committed by its subscribers.
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2. Non-Telco-ISPs and cable companies DO NOT WANT TO BE common carriers.
3. ISPs are protected by the Good Samaritan provisions of the Communications Decency Act. THIS is what protects them from liability, NOT common carrier status.
Re:Pretty Confusing (Score:4, Interesting)
Every now and then when they want to send me a message (e.g. to tell me about "special offers" or whatever), they intercept one of my http requests and reply with a redirect to a page on their website, with the oh-so-important message and a link to the page I had asked for.
Needless to say that scripts that automatically parse web pages get confused.
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It also means your ISP has some equipment capable of hijacking TCP connections, a.k.
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Why the tired, old jargon? (Score:2)
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But to me it's more simple than that. It means misleading the consumer of the cable service. 'The website does not exist' is being changed to 'we're not being up-front that there was a type, misdirected link, etc, we're going to show you adverts instead'.
The Site Finder-like service further reduces the web from a meritocrious system of links and content, to a mess of adverts.
Will cable subscribers' fees be r
Re:Pretty Confusing (Score:5, Funny)
A typo of "typo". Oh, the irony.
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Don't email them, call them. Emailing them, they can just ignore that, drop you into a mailbox and reply to hundreds of people with a form letter at once. Calling them costs them money. This is the only stimulus to which corporations respond: p
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Sue them! (Score:2)
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Morons (Score:2)