Featured Blogs

Breaking the Internet’s Consensus Rule

The Internet, ultimately, is a fragile thing, as an entity. It depends upon the consensus of those responsible for its infrastructure to operate on a daily basis. Because of the inherent robustness as a technical architecture, there is no entity that can "break the Internet" in the sense of stopping the flow of traffic, but there are several entities that can create a variety of inconveniences, some minor and some serious, for the millions who use the Internet. more

SiteFinder Is Leaking Data

I just discovered that VeriSign's SiteFinder Web site is leaking data submitted in Web forms to its marketing analysis partner, Omniture. Forms can easily contain personal information such as an email address. For the problem to occur, a Web form must use the GET method. This data spill problem occurs if a Web page anywhere on the Internet submits a Web form to an action URL with a misspelled or expired domain name. Because of VeriSign's recent controversial changes to the DNS system, this form data is submitted to the SiteFinder Web site.  more

PIR Opposes SiteFinder; Will Not Implement Similar Service for .ORG

Public Interest Registry, the .ORG registry operator, sent a letter today to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey concerning VeriSign's implementation of a DNS wildcard redirection service commonly known as SiteFinder. The letter says that it supports ICANN's call for VeriSign to voluntarily suspend SiteFinder and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) preliminary position paper. It goes on to say that PIR will not be implementing any DNS wildcard to the .ORG zone... more

It’s “Verisign vs. Users”

But even if the collateral damage is left out of the picture, the very idea behind SiteFinder is user-unfriendly, and that's the second half of the ALAC's note: SiteFinder is, ultimately, about short-cutting other error handling methods, and redirecting any users that enter non-existing domain names into a web browser to Verisign's own service, for commercial purposes. SiteFinder is designed so it becomes difficult to deploy superior error handling services that would compete with it -- because errors aren't flagged. more

Go Daddy Sues VeriSign Over Site Finder

Go Daddy Software, Inc. has filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Arizona against VeriSign Inc., seeking a temporary restraining order against VeriSign's new Site Finder service, a paid-advertising page VeriSign has established on the Internet to which the traffic associated with mistyped, and other, domain names will be directed. Go Daddy's lawsuit claims that VeriSign is misusing its position as the .com and .net domain registry to gain an unfair competitive advantage by intercepting (and profiting from) internet traffic resulting from the scores of invalid domain names that are typed into users' browsers on a daily basis. more

Privacy and Trust Go Hand-In-Hand

A few days ago, Eric Goldman wrote an interesting thinkpiece in CircleID regarding users' feeling about privacy. He seems to conclude that the existent regulations and policies on the matter are unnecessary, since Privacy doesn't "really" matters to the consumer. Eric based his argumentation on a number of surveys, stating that, even when the user expresses concerns about their privacy, on line behavior shows a different reality. We don't want to discuss here the soundness of surveys as a reliable source of information, but the author could be assuming too much in his analysis. more

Why Site Finder is Breaking MS Outlook & Windows Networking Utilities

I have discovered that VeriSign's SiteFinder service breaks Microsoft's Outlook and Microsoft's Outlook Express email readers as well as many of the standard Windows Networking Utilities by providing misleading error messages, temporary lockups, and incorrect status information.  more

Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic

Want a sense of just how much traffic VeriSign is receiving from its SiteFinder service? Alexa, with its Alexa Toolbar and associated traffic tracking services, makes it easy to find out...Over the past three months, taken as a whole, VeriSign had traffic rank 1,559. But today its traffic rank is 19, meaning... more

ICANN and IAB Ask VeriSign to Suspend Site Finder

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released an "Advisory" concerning VeriSign's deployment of DNS wildcard (Site Finder) service: "Since the deployment, ICANN has been monitoring community reaction, including analysis of the technical effects of the wildcard, and is carefully reviewing the terms of the .com and .net Registry Agreements. In response to widespread expressions of concern from the Internet community about the effects of the introduction of the wildcard..." more

$100 Million Lawsuit Filed Against VeriSign

Popular Enterprises LLC, the parent company of Netster.com, has filed a $100 million dollar lawsuit against VeriSign, Inc. The Complaint alleges antitrust violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act based upon VeriSign's release of the Site Finder product. The suit requests injunctive relief to prevent VeriSign from operating Sitefinder, and to otherwise cease what Popular Enterprises believes to be its monopolistic practices. more

Site Finder: The Technical, Legal & Privacy Concerns

It is openly admitted , in the same Implementation PDF file, that all accesses to the Site Finder service are monitored and archived. A further worry for users is the privacy policy and terms of service posted on the Site Finder service. Not only does the simple act of mistyping a URL implicitly cause you, the end user, to accept VeriSign's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy without the chance to review and accept or decline either, but critical information as described above is not disclosed in either policy (as of this writing). The Privacy Policy clearly states... more

ICANN and DOC Announce New Three-Year Agreement

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce (DoC) today announced that they agreed to extend their joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for three additional years until September 30, 2006. more

ALAC Statement on Site Finder

The ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee would like to bring to ICANN's attention concerns about VeriSign's surprising roll-out of the "SiteFinder" service for .com and .net. This practice raises grave technical concerns, as it de facto removes error diagnostics from the DNS protocol, and replaces them by an error handling method that is tailored for HTTP, which is just one of the many Internet protocols that make use of the DNS.
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Bug Reveals the Snooper in VeriSign’s Site Finder

Here's another interesting angle on the Verisign Site Finder Web site. VeriSign has hired a company called Omniture to snoop on people who make domain name typos. I found this Omniture Web bug on a VeriSign Site Finder Web page... more

Paul Vixie in Response to Site Finder Controversy

As a domain holder myself (of vix.com), I would not have chosen ".com" for my parent domain name back in 1988 had there been a wildcard domain name [that activates Site Finder service] under ".com". The risk of someone attempting to reach me but ending up talking to someone else instead would have been seen as "too great". I am now searching for a new parent domain whose publisher will guarantee me, in perpetuity, that there will be no wildcard name as there now is in "com". more