[ NNSquad ] Re: Karoo is DNS hijacking

[David Ulevitch <david@opendns.com>]

It's not clear who is providing the technology for this service.  If  
Ask.com is providing the technology for this, it represents a new  
business product for them.  If it's someone else, it's hard to figure  
out who.  Perhaps Nominum or Paxfire.

As usual when this happens, we see our numbers grow (in this case, our  
UK account signups).

-David

On Mar 26, 2008, at 9:21 AM, lynn wrote:

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/kraoo_nds_typo_hjakin/
>
> Something fishy about DNS hijacking
> By Chris Williams → More by this author
> Published Tuesday 25th March 2008 11:33 GMT
> Improve IT Culture and employee satisfaction in your business - Sign  
> up
> for the latest RegCast here
>
> Hull's broadband monopoly, Karoo, has joined the ranks of Verisign,
> Tiscali and Orange in redirecting net users' mistyped URLs to pages
> displaying advertising.
>
> Karoo, part of the K-Com group, is doing the hijacking in  
> partnership with
> Ask.com.
>
> Instead of seeing a plain error, customers are seeing their spelling
> mistakes pumped into the Ask search engine. In exchange, K-Com gets  
> a cut
> of advertising revenues from the results.
>
> The firm's technical support workers are telling customers that the
> "service" is only a trial. If they query the redirects, unhappy  
> business
> and consumer users are told they can opt-out and given alternative DNS
> server details.
>
> The trial began on 17 March. It intercepts domain queries that are
> non-existent in Karoo's own cache.
>
> snip