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 Nonexistent .BIZ Addresses Redirected to Sleazy Sites
posted by michael on Monday May 19 2003, @03:49AM
dtobias writes "I don't know if it's an official Neulevel policy decision, or if somebody's hacked the registry, but now if you type a nonexistent .biz address into your Web browser (like this), instead of it failing to resolve (as unregistered domains normally do), it sends you on a series of back-button-killing redirections involving sites with raw IP addresses instead of domain names, finally terminating on what seems to be a random destination. Sometimes you wind up on a gambling or adult entertainment site, sometimes on a page that pops up heaps of extra browser windows (you're best off using Mozilla as your browser so you can disable this stuff), sometimes on a sleazy pseudo-portal filled with multilevel marketing links."
[Editor's note: When I tried it this morning in two browsers, I got directed to something called "looksmart" every time. Maybe the other redirect was a (temporary) hack? This seems like policy...-mf]
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"This hardly seems like the best image for the top level domain that "means business", and promised "military level security". (The latter concept falls a little flat after some well-reported
.mil problems, anyway.) Register a .biz domain, and you won't have to wait for slimeballs to typosquat it by putting very annoying stuff at nearby addresses; Neulevel will do it for you!"
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Nonexistent .BIZ Addresses Redirected to Sleazy Sites
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The Fine Print:
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
We are not responsible for them in any way.
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Most of the registrars have discovered the value of using pay-per-click parking pages for domain names registered by customers who do not yet have web services, and who consequently use the registrars default nameservers.
This is merely taking the same revenue strategy to the next level.
The question is what is so fascinating about a "server not found" error?
But, yes, it does have the amusing side effect of the appearance of "pre-cybersquatted" domain names.
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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I have never seen sooooooo much hot hair being expended about sooooooo little. I think this makes a lot of sense. I don't see a lot of consumer utility in putting up error pages. Quite the contrary: these pages are a blight on the Internet. So I applaud Neustar for leading the way. And if they make money at it--great! God bless 'em.
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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For a day or two, though, these "unresolved queries" were getting sent to various gambling, porn, and multilevel marketing sites, complete with back-button-hijacking and massive popups (thank goodness for Mozilla [mozilla.org] and its popup disabling configuration setting).
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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- 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
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Readers of IW and my weblog will remember the uproar created a few months ago when Verisign began trapping for errors in the com and net TLDs and redirecting them to the plug-in page for IDN resolution. Is that much different than what is going on here with the biz errors?
Bret
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You are, as usual, bang on correct here, Bret. If the domain name does not exist in the zone file, then the server is supposed to return NXDOMAIN.
The difference here is that there is less of a "useful feature" argument to be made. It is simply a way for Neulevel to make money from unregistered domains.
It is interesting that if you check, for example, www.googgle.biz you get, surprise, a search engine (but not Google's).
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Given that .biz's servers seem to return an A record for every possible name in .biz, what happens to the search mechnanisms that Versign just patented? It would seem that such a search is rendered useless because there would always be a positive confirmation that a name is in use in .biz.
By-the-way, I found it odd that the author used a web browser as a domain name query tool - there is a long path between the so-called "address bar" on a browser and DNS - and DNS is not always the end result of entering a name into an address bar.
Anyone who wants to see what DNS is doing really ought to use tools that actually directly query DNS, tools like "dig", "host", or "nslookup".
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Okay, fine... Does this record indicate to you, Karl, what DNS is "really doing"?
; > DiG 8.3 > dafdsdfsdafdsfdsafasd.biz
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
;; QUERY SECTION:
;; dafdsdfsdafdsfdsafasd.biz, type = A, class = IN
;; ANSWER SECTION:
dafdsdfsdafdsfdsafasd.biz. 1M IN CNAME ip90.chainlink.net.
ip90.chainlink.net. 6d3h28m15s IN A 209.249.107.90
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
chainlink.net. 6d23h36m2s IN NS ns3.chainlink.com.
chainlink.net. 6d23h36m2s IN NS ns1.chainlink.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.chainlink.com. 1d3h28m15s IN A 209.249.107.10
ns3.chainlink.com. 1d3h28m15s IN A 209.249.107.20
;; Total query time: 183 msec
;; FROM: homer to SERVER: default -- 216.145.1.2
;; WHEN: Tue May 20 00:44:35 2003
;; MSG SIZE sent: 43 rcvd: 172
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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Tina Dam, ICANN's Chief gTLD Registry Liaison, offered this response to NeuLevel's redirecting unregistered .biz domain names to LookSmart [looksmart.com].
Dear Doug,
Thank you for your attention in this matter.
However, the wildcard redirection of BIZ names is a short-term test of the BIZ directory performed by NeuLevel, with no revenue involved. Hence there is no breach of the NeuLevel Agreement with ICANN.
Kind regards,
Tina Dam
ICANN
Chief gTLD Registry Liaison
Phone: +1-310-301-5838
Doug Mehus
http://dmehus.posterous.com/ [posterous.com]
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I asked how long the test would take, and Ms. Dam was kind enough to offer this follow up.
Hello Doug,
I expect that the test will be done within a few days.
Tina
Doug Mehus
http://dmehus.posterous.com/ [posterous.com]
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Wait a minute though. I thought that the purported problem with Verisign's IDN solution was that it violated technical standards, not that it was a profit/no-profit issue.
Bret
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Has anybody noticed the TTL's on the records that .biz is handing out - It is between six and seven days!
I know of no sane network administrator who would run a test that puts bogus information out into DNS - let's call it what it is, intentional cache pollution - with timeouts that are nearly a week long.
Whatever NewLevel is doing, they should have turned down the TTLS, got in, run their test, and got out so as to minimize the pollution.
And they should have pre-announced the test to ISPs and others who are being affected. Such an announcement is more than a mere courtesy.
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No revenue involved?
Exqueeze me?
As if Looksmart is not making a penny by offering their pay-per-placement search results.
Uh, Earth to Tina Dam: Looksmart is a paid search engine. There is "revenue involved" every time your eyeballs are looking at a page of Looksmart search results.
Either the folks at ICANN are unbelievably stupid, or they think we are.
Glad the community consensus agreed on conducting this test. It would have been nice to tell the trademark attorneys that I am spamming with information about how all of their client's trademarks have been typosquatted in .biz and .us.
I'm sure the folks at www.googgggle.biz are really happy to learn about this "test".
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- 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
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U.S. Pat. No. 6,332,158 Domain name system lookup allowing intelligent correction of searches and presentation of auxiliary information
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Most folks tend to think that the world wide web is the internet and to think of DNS as the address bar on their web browser.
However, there is a long and winding software path between what is entered in that address bar and what ends up visible in the browser's windows. And that path may not involve DNS at all.
Priority spots on that software path are being established - Internet Explorer lets Microsoft have its say about the meaning of those characters that the user entered.
So, even if there is a patent on "intelligent" DNS, there is lots of room for the whole DNS system to be bypassed.
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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Since I use Mozilla [mozilla.org], whatever Microsoft does with its address bar has no relevance to mine.
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Hey, I think this is a great thing. Neustar and Level, along with Looksmart, are trying to improve the Internet by getting rid of those annoying 404 error pages. There no logical reason this shouldn't happen. Rather than carping at the corporate players, just because they are doing something different, we should be supporting their efforts to improve the Internet experience.
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Actually, "404 error pages" are what you get when the host in a URL resolves properly, but the specific page in question isn't found. A different error, at the DNS level rather than the HTTP level, occurs when the host is not found.
However, both sorts of errors are useful for the management of Internet resources; there are plenty of link checkers that go through the links in Web sites and find ones that produce errors. I've just run such a report on my personal sites, and am working to remove the bad links now. When servers or registries "helpfully" remove such errors, that prevents such programs from doing their job.
At any rate, if Neulevel/star wanted to provide a useful search feature, they could have redirected to Google, but that wouldn't provide income like the pay-for-search service they used. At any rate, what they're redirecting to now is better than the gambling and porn sites they redirected to at first.
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So, let me see if I understand you correctly.
If I register a typographical error of a famous trademark, and then point the domain name at a pay-per-click search engine, then I am a cybersquatter.
But if I run a registry, and I cause a typographical error of a famous trademark to resolve to a pay-per-click search engine, then I am "improving the internet experience".
Can you explain the difference?
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Let me explain the difference
With "typosquatting" someone is purchasing a name that is close to a trademark name, such as "Coke." The person is essentially purchasing "property" that infringes on the Coke trademark.
That's not what is happening here--not even close. NeuStar/Level, from what I can tell, does not "own" any of these mispelling. Anyone can buy these names/mispellings. What Neustar seems to be doing is taking all "unresolved" DNS queries and directing them to a search page, which might help the consumer find what he is looking for. This seems like a fair and reasonable thing to do, especially if the alernative is an error page!
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Looksmart's top answer for "cocacola" is a scalper selling $300 tickets to the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 race.
I perfectly understand the technical difference. There is, however, no functional difference. If it is "fair and reasonable" for Neulevel to direct typos to a PPC search engine, then it is every bit as "fair and reasonable" for a typosquatter to do the same thing. The only effective difference is who gets to put the dollar in their pocket for the typo.
You type in a name, you get a search page. From the user's perspective what is the difference?
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Actually, there is one big difference between a typosquatter and what Neustar is doing. A typosquatter is, essentially, purchasing a domain name that is close to a trademarked name. But Neustar is not buying anybody's domain. It's just taking an unresolved query and redirecting it to a PPC search engine. If a trademark owner wants to buy a mispelling that's close to his trademarked name, it can do so.
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