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The Internet Networking The Almighty Buck

Canadian ISP Hijacking DNS Lookup Errors 225

Freshly Exhumed tips us to news that Canadian ISP Rogers Cable appears to be redirecting invalid DNS requests to their own search and advertising page. Roadrunner got caught doing the same thing earlier this year. According to the article, "The hijacking appears to be an attempt by Rogers to use its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology to cash in on the mistakes of its users." Freshly Exhumed also reminds us, "As IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky has warned in the past, this presents a very serious security problem."
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Canadian ISP Hijacking DNS Lookup Errors

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  • Good Grief (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:20AM (#24254179) Journal

    I know one problem it can cause is for a number of spam tests which look for the message coming from a legitimate domain. When the DNS server says "yup, that resolves" even when there's actually no domain, the test is defeated.

    • Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Informative)

      by PunkOfLinux ( 870955 ) <mewshi@mewshi.com> on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:32AM (#24254257) Homepage

      What the hell? Verizon is doing this now, too. Whenever I type in 'slashdot' in firefox, it just takes me to their useless search page, which is getting REALLY old now. I'm getting pretty disgusted now, and they should get it through their thick heads that if they're gonna charge us money for 'net access, they have NO right to make more money off of us by selling ads instead of allowing our browsers to function as expected.

      • Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:45AM (#24254343)

        Verizon has been doing this for a while. I read the Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, etc. every time they update it. It's clearly there, disguised as a 'feature' called DNS Assistance.

        However, Verizon does have non-poisoned DNS servers which you can find in their Help pages, along with instructions for changing your machine's settings. http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/link/help/item&objId=23883 [verizon.net]

        • Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Informative)

          by dosius ( 230542 ) <bridget@buric.co> on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:58AM (#24254443) Journal

          They tried to get me to use their poisoned servers, and as soon as I found out (btw, they DO report nxdomain, along with their error handling servers), I went back to the old ones.

          The poisoned ones were 68.237.161.12 (nsnyny01.verizon.net) and 71.250.0.12 (nsnwrk01.verizon.net), and the unpoisoned ones are 151.202.0.85 and 151.203.0.85.

          -uso.

          • Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Informative)

            by c_g_hills ( 110430 ) <chaz.chaz6@com> on Saturday July 19, 2008 @12:17PM (#24254575) Homepage Journal

            Verizon's non-poisoned dns servers are vulnerable to the newly discovered dns vulnerability. Shout at them!

            151.202.0.85 is POOR: 26 queries in 2.1 seconds from 22 ports with std dev 19.03

            151.203.0.85 is POOR: 26 queries in 2.4 seconds from 22 ports with std dev 15.08

            Check for your self using `dig porttest.dns-oarc.net. in txt`

      • by flajann ( 658201 ) <(fred.mitchell) (at) (gmx.de)> on Saturday July 19, 2008 @12:08PM (#24254501) Homepage Journal
        You can "opt out" of the Verizon annoyance by modifying your DNS address by adding "2" to the last octet.

        I've had to do this, and it works. No annoying Verizon snatching my failed DNS lookups!

        Of course, if you try to get this out of their so-called "tech support", they will not know what you're asking for until you manage to get down to tier 2 or 3 or so. Amazing as it sounds, teir-one Verizon Fios tech support will glaze over at the mere mention of DNS, and will stupidly keep trying to get you to do inane things with your browser.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by code65536 ( 302481 )

          Unfortunately, this is possible only for their PPPoE users. Customers outside of their northeast service area don't use PPPoE, and it's not possible to change the DNS servers in these non-PPPoE cases with the routers supplied by Verizon. >:(

          • Why so you have to use their router? Can't you put the modem in bridge mode and use your own router?

            • yes, you can. That's exactly what I have going on here. And I tried using OpenDNS and it STILL forwarded to the damn verizon page.

          • I have FiOS with the actiontec router and all you need is the password and you can tweak whatever you want. Verizon is actually pretty good about letting you manage your the router they supply. Of course, of you hork it, they tell to to reboot to factory defaults. :)

            Re: the GP and not getting good tech support. When they first starting doing this, I followed the help, and it didn't work. I called tech support, the guy I talked to argued with me that 1) Verizon does mess with DNS and 2) I had a virus. Idi
          • by sniepre ( 517796 )
            What? That is ridiculous to say. If your provided router will not allow you to change the DNS servers it looks up from, then set your workstation to not look to the router for DNS! (Or, don't accept the DHCP handed off DNS ips that it gives you)

            Just set your local workstations DNS to pull from, oh, 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 and just bypass their crappy DNS altogether.
          • by flajann ( 658201 )
            I have Verizon Fios, and it is NOT PPPoE. I was able to change the DNS setting without a hitch. You may have to do it in the "modem" itself. I have a NAT setup with a subnet behind the firewall with a DNS server, so I was able to alter the forwarding requests there.
      • Change your DNS servers. 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6 are known clean DNS servers. Most routers will let you change your DNS servers for your entire network.

        • by c_g_hills ( 110430 ) <chaz.chaz6@com> on Saturday July 19, 2008 @12:22PM (#24254611) Homepage Journal

          According to Paul Vixie, Level3 operators have said that they plan to restrict access to these servers in future to customers only, so make sure you have an alternative available!

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by rs79 ( 71822 )

            Yeah, Paul's big on DNS "Alternatives". Not.

            Hughes does this too now with their sat service. Never mind I use my own dns servers, their "transparent" web proxy does it's own dns and ignores the ones you use. Just for web.

            That is, I can FTP to say, "free.tibet" but if I try for that web page I get a hughes/yahoo thing that says "did you mean..." (no, I did't you asswipe) Grrrrrrrrrr.

            Vixie of course, invented the "transparent web proxy" to "get around" the "problem" of people using non-iana roots to get at we

      • I switched over to using OpenDNS with my Linksys router and I get redirected to their fancy advert pages when I mistype something as well.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          That's the entire purpose of OpenDNS. Open is just a misdirection word they stuck in there to make themselves sound better than they are.
          • They clearly explain that they mangle your DNS requests, and this makes their service "smart". Unfortunately, they do not explain some of the negative ramifications of this. However, their service is targeted to "end-users". Presumably, an email provider would use their own DNS server on a real OS (I do).

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by no1home ( 1271260 )

            Maybe I don't understand the complaint. I use OpenDNS and I don't see any advertising. (If you do see heavy advertising, I'd love to see a screen shot.) It's true you don't get the "404" error and you instead get a search page provided by them, but that's no different than telling your browser to search Google/Yahoo/MSM when an address can't be found. Only a few of us prefer the old 404 error and most want suggestions on where to link to. The advantage to OpenDNS is in having an account (I use the free

            • Re:Good Grief (Score:4, Informative)

              by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @04:10PM (#24256427)

              Maybe I don't understand the complaint. <snip> Only a few of us prefer the old 404 error and most want suggestions on where to link to.

              I think the most annoying aspect is how we get used to leaving off the 'www' at the beginning of domains with Firefox, and Firefox adds it in for you if the non-www address fails to resolve. With this DNS hijacking this feature is broken.

      • by notnAP ( 846325 )
        Verizon here in Dracut, Mass. (via DSL) is not doing it, at least for now. I have seen it happen sporadically in the past two years.

        My favorite test, making sure I'm avoiding something I hit recently and therefore is cached somewhere, is to type in 3-4 random alpha characters (sans a tld). Every 3-4 alpha character domain name resolves to something in the .com TLD.

      • Not just Verizon. The article said that Road Runner had been caught doing this, but as a user of this service, I can say from experience that they still do. Though, the weird thing is that it only happens about 10% of the time, whereas it happened 100% of the time at one point.

        As someone pointed out earlier, you can change your DNS servers to 4.1.1.1 - 4.1.1.6, as those servers belong to Level 3 Communications, a backbone provider. No guarantee they won't do it in the future, though.

      • Re:Good Grief (Score:5, Informative)

        by Trailwalker ( 648636 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @04:06PM (#24256403)
        AdBlock gets rid of the Verizon "search" page.

        Clickity, clickity, never see again.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by davolfman ( 1245316 )
      To be honest I still think this thing is a bomb waiting to go off when it comes to anything outside the TLD's. In my mind if someone does this for say badmachine.slashdot.org they are pretty much guilty of criminal trespass, trademark violation, and/or fraud. Within the TLD space say www.badurltest.org where the typo isn't already someone else's claimed property they can pretty much do whatever they want, or whatever we let them.
      • > In my mind if someone does this for say badmachine.slashdot.org they are pretty much
        > guilty of criminal trespass, trademark violation, and/or fraud.

        Fortunately, your mind is not a court of law.

        > Within the TLD space say www.badurltest.org where the typo isn't already someone else's
        > claimed property

        No string of characters is or can be property.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No string of characters is or can be property.

          Really? Quick, tell the US Patent and Trademark office!

    • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

      So if my server is offline my visitors get redirected to another site, what happens when my server comes back online? I guess I have to wait for the user to flush their DNS.

      I don't want my users being taken to another site if the server in oneday offline.

  • aaaa'rrrr!
  • Well I'll be... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shabbs ( 11692 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:23AM (#24254201)

    This must be brand new. I did a test just now and a bad URL sends you here:

    http://www20.search.rogers.com/search?

    With appropriate variables substituted for what you were typing of course, like this:

    Enter: http://www.rogersblowz.com and you get:

    http://www20.search.rogers.com/search?qo=www.rogersblowz.com&rn=mEelOh0JrKFZejZ

    Let the debate rage on!!!

    • Re:Well I'll be... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Holmwood ( 899130 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:56AM (#24254427)

      Worse than this even. I've been redirected to Rogers Search pages, replete with advertising, for domains that I know exist, and that I know have been entered correctly (e.g. via a bookmark).

      It used to happen a lot with http://ragnartornquist.com/ [ragnartornquist.com] (Tornquist is a senior game designer for Funcom). Granted that's a tough name to spell properly for a North American, but since I'd click on a bookmarked link, or a google page, I was sure it wasn't a problem with my typing.

      What started to give it away as being something at Rogers (rather than my computer infected with malware) was that this was happening on every device I connected to the net -- Lynx on BSD, Safari on Apple, Opera on Maemo, Iceweasel on Ubuntu, and, of course, Firefox/IE/Opera on Windows.

      (Yeah, I have a lot of different OS's sitting around!)

      For a while I then became convinced my router had been compromised, but even switching routers didn't fix it.

      Concluding it was unlikely that five different OSes and myriad different browsers had all been compromised, as well as two different routers, I contacted Rogers.

      They said they were experimenting with "Software Improvements" and that the problem should go away for existing domains.

      Well, using a proxy fixed it for me. But not a pleasant solution.

      Software Improvements.

      And the problem did go away for me at least. But I wonder if anyone else is being redirected to Rogers garbage pages for domains which exist.

      Holmwood.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by KGIII ( 973947 )

        Granted that's a tough name to spell properly for a North American, but since I'd click on a bookmarked link, or a google page, I was sure it wasn't a problem with my typing.

        'Snot very nice of you to insult North Americans so openly and to make such broad sweeping strokes about the intellectual capacity of North Americans.

        Ah well. I think you might be right though.

      • Some ISPs will indeed show their annoying search pages even if the domain exists. I used to access the Internet via my phone and get redirected to a page that had some colorful images on it and some text, dependent on the domain name it was for. It annoyed the life out of me, especially because it would also, for example, happen to return that page instead of an image, or instead of sending the form you just filled in to the right server. Fortunately, I had already started the process of switching to a chea

      • Earlier I went to Pandora... It was redirected to Rogers search page. I know I typed the URL correctly. I realized that my Tor wasn't running (can't listen to Pandora outside the US), I started it, and everything worked well since.
    • I had Rogers up until about 1 year ago and the DNS servers were generally flaky. I guess they'll work better now that they have a way to make money off it. Ditto QUS on VoIP call since there's Rogers Home Phone. Does QOS still work against Vonage and such?

      Strangely, I remember reading about 4 to 6 months ago the redirections were already starting. Rogers tends to release things into test markets and see how many complaints they get. If most people don't know or don't care they go ahead and roll it out.

  • easy solution (Score:4, Informative)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:24AM (#24254211)
    http://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]

    basically it is remove your ISP's dns#s and add these

    208.67.222.222
    208.67.220.220
    • Re:easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:29AM (#24254235) Homepage Journal

      so, how long before your ISP starts blocking use of DNS servers other than their own?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        already happening here in italy... both the ads on false page and i can not use opendns nor OpenRootServerNetvork

    • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Informative)

      by tgx ( 1077763 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:38AM (#24254301)

      no, they're doing the exact same thing.
      they're redirecting invalid requests to
      http://guide.opendns.com/?url=%5Burl.here%5D [opendns.com]

      $ host aoeuidhtns.com
      Host aoeuidhtns.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

      $ host aoeuidhtns.com 208.67.222.222
      aoeuidhtns.com has address 208.69.34.132

      • Re:easy solution (Score:4, Informative)

        by TealShark ( 598509 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @01:25PM (#24255187)
        ... which you can manually stop them from doing by disabling typo corrections in settings.
        • "Features that will not work without typo correction enabled: shortcuts, adult site blocking, custom image, custom message."

          No, I just want to get rid of the damn search page misfeature. For being such otherwise "good guys" and very technical, I'm amazed that they screw things up in this fashion so very badly.

      • Too be fair, you're not paying OpenDNS to access their servers already. So when they redirect bad requests to a search page, it's not quite as bad. I'm curious if their for-pay DNS service redirects, as well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by darrenkw ( 1085901 )
        Right, however, if you sign up for an account you can turn that off for your router.
    • Re:easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shabbs ( 11692 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:43AM (#24254329)

      Funny thing is that OpenDNS also re-directs bad URLs to their search page. So really, how much better is it? ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jcam2 ( 248062 )

        Worse still, they were (and maybe still are) redirecting lookups for google.com to their own servers .. and I'm pretty sure that Google isn't often down.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by davidu ( 18 )

        1) Our DNS is more secure. This has been shown by third parties now numerous times.
        2) Our DNS is faster.
        3) Our DNS lets you block out responses you don't want.
        4) Our DNS lets you turn off the search result pages, though most organizations like them and customize them.
        5) Our DNS has a complete dashboard of stats and settings and is 100% opt-in. If you don't like it, don't use it (but nearly everyone who tries it likes it).

        Comparing us to Rogers is like apples and oranges.

        -David

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MrZaius ( 321037 )

        Funny thing is that OpenDNS also re-directs bad URLs to their search page. So really, how much better is it? ;)

        Add to that the fact that they're also redirecting Google's traffic to themselves.

        Plus, to add insult to injury, they don't offer "unpoisoned" servers like some ISPs mentioned above. They use your desire to not put up with this nonsense as an excuse to force users to register their names, IP addresses, etc and, if DHCP users, run ddclient or some equivalent. OpenDNS opens up some very, very serious privacy concerns, at this point in the game.

        I for one will be setting up my own DNS server tonight. Enough, al

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by deraj123 ( 1225722 )

      For all those responding to your post that OpenDNS does the same thing. I am currently using OpenDNS, and it is working exactly as I would like, with no invalid responses, no ad-search type pages, etc.

      If you sign up for an account (free) with OpenDNS, they give you a dashboard where you can configure how you want them to respond to certain types of requests. If you turn ALL of the options OFF, then their DNS service acts exactly as it should, with no hijacking of your requests. (for awhile, you couldn

  • Ignore their servers (Score:5, Informative)

    by surmak ( 1238244 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:30AM (#24254245)

    If the ISP is messing with the DNS service, the best thing to do is to use a different service.

    For Linux/Unix users, you can just run a caching-only server on the desktop system, and it will issue its own name requests from the root on down. I've been doing a slightly more complex version of this at home for VPN purposes. (Forward requests to my employer's net to the private internal DNS server (through the VPN), while querying the public internet for all other servers.)

    I don't know it a similar option is available for Windows users w/o shelling out big bucks, but it is technically feasible

    If you cannot run a caching-only server, another option is to use a third-party DNS server. The only problem here is that it would not be automagically configured by DHCP, and would have to be manually set up.

    • by notnAP ( 846325 )
      How many people have their workstations directly connected to the internet modem, using a public IP ; and how many people have some sort of router between the modem and the workstation, like a home wireless router?

      I'd guess the latter is far more common (and , of course, safer when done right). If so, you are likely running your own DHCP server on that router for your internal subnet, or have manually set permanent internal numbers for your workstations. In that case, you've also set your own DNS defaults

    • Why can't you run the same (probably open source) caching-only server on Windows? Without shelling out the big bucks :)
    • by stevied ( 169 )

      I'm hoping to take delivery of a WRT54GL [wikipedia.org] for precisely this reason. I can stick maradns [maradns.org] on it, which does its own recursion, keeps an in memory cache, and randomizes the source ports of its queries (avoiding the other big DNS security issue that's come up recently.) This will be nicely platform agnostic, so the Win XP box on my home network is saved from being fdisk'ed for another few months..

      (Of course, because my ISP uses PPPoA and not PPPoE, I've also had to get a Speedtouch 536 [whirlpool.net.au], which can relay via PPTP

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:30AM (#24254247)
    This type of behavior is wrong on so many levels so I wonder what would be the danger of having ICANN police this type of behavior? It seems that ISPs are doing more and more to circumvent "standards" for their own gain. Would it be too much to ask ICANN to come up with a set of rules that ALL ISPs must adhere to or risk losing their netblock? I'm not even sure ICANN would do anything but I'm just posing the question.
    • by mxs ( 42717 )

      This type of behavior is wrong on so many levels so I wonder what would be the danger of having ICANN police this type of behavior?

      You want to give ICANN a police force ? Are you nuts ?

      It seems that ISPs are doing more and more to circumvent "standards" for their own gain.

      And on their own networks with their own customers. Don't like it ? Don't buy their service. It is that simple.

      Would it be too much to ask ICANN to come up with a set of rules that ALL ISPs must adhere to or risk losing their netblock? I'm not even sure ICANN would do anything but I'm just posing the question.

      Yes, it would be too much to ask. ICANN can regulate registries. This has NOTHING to do with registries. This is a DNS resolver on a private network. If it wants to return 127.0.0.1 all day, it damn well better be allowed to. Ever wondered how DNS blacklists work ? Want them blocked too ?

  • How annoying (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    My ISP has been doing the same thing for a while now. It fucks with the stored history in my browser. I make a mistake and every time I'm typing in the correct URL later, my mistake is shown as an option from my history.

    My ISP is the American ISP Charter [charter.net]. When I type in a bad url, I get a search page like this [charter.net].

  • I noticed this yesterday and asked about it a DSL Reports and got some interesting replies like this one:
    "I've recently noticed this as well. I use rogers DNS as a secondary dns and 4.2.2.1 as my primary. Either way 30 seconds after seeing this I got annoyed and in firefox 3 typed in...
    "about:config" in the address bar, accepted the "This will void warranty" message and proceeded to type in "browser.search.search" into the filter bar
    you should see "browser.search.searchEnginesURL" come up after typing
  • Been done before (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    EarthLink has been doing this for years. They have a workaround using "unsupported" servers that maintains real DNS behavior.

    http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/09/more_info_on_dead_domain_handl.php

  • Fantastic. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @11:50AM (#24254385) Journal
    Let me guess... They either already have, or soon will in a pitiful pretense of response to criticism, offer some sort of insanely weak opt-out mechanism.

    I'm guessing one of two things:
    Manually configure alternate DNS servers on a per device basis(a la Verizon's current setup, may they be thrice cursed)
    or:
    Something involving cookies, a la Phorm and friends.

    For things like this, opt-out just isn't good enough.
  • PaxFire (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) * on Saturday July 19, 2008 @12:03PM (#24254481) Homepage

    [This is Dan Kaminsky]

    I took a look at what Rogers is doing. They're using PaxFire, who indeed was directly vulnerable to the attacks I described at Toorcon a few months ago. PaxFire fixed their stuff up, but yes, the security of the web at Rogers is limited to the security of those ad servers at PaxFire.

  • by sokoban ( 142301 ) on Saturday July 19, 2008 @12:14PM (#24254553) Homepage

    I guess the thought with the ISP's nowadays is that "everybody else is doing it, why can't we?"

  • This is the best way:

    on resolv.conf:

    nameserver 4.2.2.1
    nameserver 4.2.2.2

    If you have a laptop or other device where you might use different connections, this is a good way to make sure your DNSs are not changed by different apps (I might connect using either wvdial or kppp, through EDGE/3G, or using KDE's wlan manager, simple DHCP on ethernet, etc)

    Just set the immutable flag on your resolv.conf file:

    chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

    If you want to make it writable again run:

    chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      It is not recommended to set immutable bit, as it causes issues in various situations (like restoring /etc from a backup). Failure to write to an immutable file is an API issue unique to Linux boxes that use ext2fs or ext3fs.. Systems that run ReiserFS, XFS, or jfs, don't have this bug.

      Future versions of DHCPD/Ifplug, or the C library, may very well properly detect the 'immutable' bit and clear it, before writing, then re-set the bit after finishing.

      Just like they do if you're root and try to write t

  • Yes, it's obnoxious and offensive and worth pointing out that at the bottom of their 'helpful' page is a link marked LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PAGE [rogers.com] which gives the following explanation:

    These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you enc

  • How is this news? In the US at least ISPs have been sending people off to http://wwwwh.found-not-help.com/ [found-not-help.com] type places with DNS spoofing magic for years.

  • Orange did this in the UK at least 18 months ago, I think. Tech Support wouldn't tell me how to get round it (they didn't seem to understand that I didn't feel it was a "feature"), but I found other DNS servers on the Net.

    AFAIK none of it is anywhere close to DPI, though. All the other services do is have a DNS server that goes "If I can't find a legit domain then return the IP of the ISP's web server" and the web server is set to listen for all requests, regardless of domain, and then does a search/advert

  • +1 Insightful

    [Rimshot]

  • Anyone who's been a Rogers customer should not be surprised in the least by this.

    Attn Rogers Customers : Switch to Teksavvy, its so nice to actually be appreciated by an ISP.

    • by Griim ( 8798 )

      I so badly wanted to switch to Teksavvy, and I did for a short while. The customer service WAS great. So good they told me the truth that I was +5km from the CO and that the wiring going into my apartment had tons of noise on it :(

      Sooo, here I am, still on Rogers. I would love to move somewhere closer to a CO.

  • I complained to my ISP years ago that they did this. But what recourse do I have? They are the only DSL provider in my area. My other option is Comcast.

    This is the problem with the stupid telecom monopolies in the U.S. They are granted monopolies, but they don't have to behave fairly. argh!

  • Hi,

    this development is not surprising. The biggest surprise for me was the amount of money that an ISP can make by doing this. Given this fact, this trend is a natural result.

    Some ISPs even learned lessons from others who were doing so before. Nowadays such a measure is implemented in a transparent way and the resulting page even contains an "opt out" button. It gets pressed only by less than 1% of all users. Why? They don't try to ram down as much advertisement as possible down the customers throat but

  • Assuming you are running a Linux or OpenBSD based router, would it be possible to modify the configuration of the router so any attempt to reach search.rogers.com results in a NXDOMAIN record being returned? This could be a nifty mod to DD-WRT and similar packages.

    I know this isn't the "right" fix, but it might be very effective.

    • Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cassini2 ( 956052 )

      At the risk of replying to my own question, if you are running DNSMasq on your router, you can use the command:

      bogus-nxdomain=64.94.110.11

      To block any given IP address, and thus override Rogers override. This works to prevent Rogers from displaying its search page, no matter what URL you enter.

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

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