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VeriSign calls halt to .com detours

medea

medea

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 4, 2002
2,517
1
Madison, Wi
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5086101.html
VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes.
Site Finder redirects mistyped and misspelled URLs to VeriSign's own site.
 
thank god, that ****ing system was horrendous and made my internet experience much worse in the two weeks it was enabled... every time i accidently spelled a URL wrong, it took me to that goddamn verisign page, which made my browser think it had found a real page, so it kept the misspelled address in the "recently typed" thing, so i keep getting it over and over and over... i don't mind verisign in general but this was such a bad idea that people should be suing them for illegal advertising techniques. what a load of ****.

:mad: :rolleyes:
pnw
 
I think I am the only person who actually liked sitefinder -- It's a lot easier to just click the right url if you mistype it the first time around.

My only complaint is that if you type the same wrong address a second time, it should just auto-redirect to the one you clicked on the last time (since the error page gets listed in your history, which is bad).
IMO sitefinder is better than an obscure message box or ISP ad page, since it actually helps you get where you wanted to go in the first place
 
okay well if some people like it (and you two are the first that i've heard), at least they should have made some cookie so that you can choose not to deal with it... it's just a method of free advertising, boosting themselves up above other registrars. to me it's as bad as those cybersquatters that buy domains just to put "search" sites on them, with categories for different directories... which is why it's so immidiately obnoxious to me.

i guess it's like, if you called a wrong number, instead of getting "the number you have dialed is not in service..." you would get some salesman's voice "hello, this is ___ phone company, we think you may have misdialed the number you're looking for. In order to help you get the correct number, we will give you a list of similar numbers, because you're too damn dumb to check the number and dial again. Oh, by the way, the wrong number you dialed has been added to your speed dial. Have a nice day."

pnw
 
Originally posted by Daveman Deluxe
I really don't see why it was such a big deal, it just doesn't seem to me like there is anything wrong, technologically or ethically, with VeriSign's idea.
Click to expand...

you don't think this is wrong?

VeriSign administers the main database of who owns which names in the .com and .net top-level domains. By adding a wildcard--a domain name system (DNS) entry that catches any request that doesn't match an address in the database--VeriSign extended its control to unregistered domains.

Three companies that compete with VeriSign subsidiary Network Solutions have filed lawsuits, claiming the move is an unfair business practice.
....
"Based on the information currently available to us, it appears that these changes have had a substantial adverse effect on the core operation of the DNS, on the stability of the Internet and on the relevant domains," Twomey wrote in the ICANN letter. He concluded: "The only prudent course of action consistent with ICANN's coordination mission is to insist that VeriSign suspend these changes pending further evaluation and study."
Click to expand...

Making the internet unstable and complicated, as well as using Microsoft-esque techniques to quell competition... yeah, seems perfectly right to me.

pnw
 
I think I am in the minority of technically minded people who liked SF, but it seems like most newbies liked it (just from my perspective). SF was really nothing like an "ad farm" site -- It was a clean simple page that 9 times out of 10 got you were you actually wanted to go. Perhaps there should have been a way to disable it, but I would like to see this service (or something like it) come back in some form. I think eventually browsers would have come around to not put sitefinder urls in the autocomplete addresses.

And I maintain I'd rather see a VeriSign search page than an AOL search page :)
 
Two problems. One if you typed a wrong address your browser thought it was a good address and next time you tried to type it brought up the bad address.

2nd problem was one day after they introduced it I had to go rushing into work because the boss was getting something like smpt.mac.com error when sending mail and was saying the mail server was down when it was simply because he had a bad email address. Took me 5 minutes to figure out and then I had to listen to complaints as to why his email program wasnt giving meaningful error messages.
 
Odd. I heard about this, but never got to see it in person. Not that my spelling is that great...

But I gotta say, doing something to try to make things more "convenient" when it actually can make things more difficult, all while unfairly using your monopoly to advertise your own crappy services over your competitions... :cough: Micro$oft :cough:

Doesn't seem too great of an idea. Maybe it's just me. Maybe Verisign just bugs me sometimes.

Not that "The page cannot be displayed" is that great either.
 
i just think that even if we can find a way to adjust everything to compensate for the technical errors, which would take considerable global time and resources, any new "page not found" site would need to be a consortium of all of the competing companies... verisign simply does not own all of the unclaimed domain names, and they're using a technical loophole to unfairly stifle competition. Basically they're stealing internet traffic. Putting all technical and convenience issues aside, that alone should be reason enough for it to be illegal. i'm not willing to give up any fair business regulations for convenience, especially a nominal one...

pnw
 
Originally posted by MrMacman
It is basically what apple does to its domain...

If you type

aple.com you get apple.com
Click to expand...
Not quite, it's legal for a company to purchase domains similar to it's own for just such purposes, www.crateandbarrel.com and www.crateandbarell.com is another example. What VeriSign is doing is a little bit different and may have too much influence over registrations in the .com and .net domains. As well as reports that it may interfer with applications such as spam filters and mail servers that rely on an Internet server returning an error message when a domain does not exist.
 
The biggest problem with SiteFinder is that the internet is more than just web browsing. Many things, such as a large share of spam filters, depend on the fact that nonexistent domain names do not resolve to any IP address at all. This is the way things are supposed to work according to the standards. If nonexistent domains suddenly start resolving, a lot of stuff breaks.
 
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