Second Initial

Stolen Errors

I could use some advice on how to make a loud message from Road Runner/Earthlink customers such as myself about the hijacked domain-not-found messages that Earthlink has started putting up. Just because I mistype a URL and it’s a nonexistent domain, I have no wish to see two or three ads and various Earthlink copyright notices!

Whenever this happens, I’m redirected to an Earthlink page with the ads and suggested search terms for what it thought I was looking for.

For example: http://earthlink-help.net/?d=error_earthlink-bf&q=sersgsea.com

I made up sersgsea.com—just random letters on my left hand. I’m assuming/hoping you’ll see the same thing I see.

Wasn’t there some outcry a while back from a bunch of customers of some other service that was hijacking bad URLs like this, and they managed to get the company to stop doing it? How did they do it?

Update: thanks to a pointer from Chris, I’ve plugged OpenDNS’ addresses into my router. The claim is not only a promise to pull stunts like what Earthlink is doing, but also claims of phishing attack warnings, faster DNS lookups, and spelling mistake correction (e.g. .cmo gets fixed to .com).

Admittedly, OpenDNS creates a few relevant ads if you try an invalid URL, but they’re text-only. Hey, they have to generate a little revenue somehow, right?

» Posted by ALBj at 05:51 PM (ET)
Category: Rant

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