VeriSign Hijacks All Nonexistent Domain Names
VeriSign have added a wildcard "A" record to the .COM and .NET top-level domain DNS zones that resolves to sitefinder.verisign.com. What this means in plain English is when someone tries to visit a nonexistent domain name, they are now redirected to a search engine managed by Verisign, instead of being shown an error message. The new search engine is supposed to improve the user web browsing experience. The search results are provided by Overture, so Verisign will make money out of this "helpful" service. VeriSign is the 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. 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. [Full story: Resolving Everything: VeriSign Adds Wildcards - Slashdot]
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