Well maybe hijacking is a little strong but comcast is playing games with DNS Services.
Today was the first we noticed because we never type in the wrong url when we want to get to a site…. yea right but while clicking on a bad url we found that that the domain we typed in was forwarded to a Comcast Website.
Thinking it was a site that Comcast might be hosting and seeing it did not have the traditional www. in the front of it we added the prefix and tried again. … No luck still a comcast advertising page with Overture Ads and Yahoo Results for the usual Youtube and Ebay links… Buy fresh WangMasterFlash at Ebay… Not the real site heh but check the link to see what we saw www.wangmasterflash.com
Now this might not seem like much but what is their selection of use here….
Big questions about delays in their dns propigation earning them income and what if there is a problem with a site and they endup taking traffic possibly showing insulting ads and search results for a registered domain name that is having technical problems …
THIS IS A DANGEROUS GAME THEY ARE PLAYING…
But even more then that if they have set up this revenue generating system it meas they are tracking customers DNS use patterns in fine grain.
Every site you visit whether its political or pornographic… every miss spelling of a sites name … every popup that you did not click that generates dns lookups…
And if they are willing to do this then they must be tracking and caching data with proxy squid servers and other methods that can be used to generate databases of customer usage.
This is really scary when you start thinking about it.
Whats even worse is many comcast customers do not know it is happening…
BUT even if they do and they find the practice objectionable there is an 80% chance that if they wanted to change providers they would not have the ability to do so.
It seems that even if you don’t want Verizon FIOS you still can not get another broadband connection within areas that Comcast serves.
I tell you the honest truth if DSL 128 was even offered in my area I would switch in a heartbeat and go to DishTV.
It really is a scandal that no one will notice or even wonder about until some type of inappropriate use is made of the data.
Just thought you guys might want to think about it…
And yes Squid Servers have been around since the 90’s .. well aware of that but what type of services are we purchasing and what is their motive.
