Comments on: Time Warner and Road Runner Attempting to Monetize by Hijacking DNS

By: 1969 Camaro For Sale

1969 Camaro For Sale — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:07:20 +0000

As a Time Warner customer, this really upsets me. It’s not so much because I think they are doing a bad thing so much as because it’s not so much a useful service. Placing a screen of paid ads on typo domains doesn’t really improve the user experience. At least when OpenDNS does this for its users, they place some organic ads in there. Also, if customers are paying $40-50 a month for internet service, why should Roadrunner be further profiting from typos. It’s just a joke, but at least they aren’t registering each typo domain that is searched for.

By: Dan Thies

Dan Thies — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:50:36 +0000

The problem with this is that it’s corrupt. You can turn it off as a user, but I’m starting to wonder if the increasingly poor DNS performance I’m seeing isn’t a scheme to display more ads. ;-D

I click the Google toolbar button in my browser, which should go straight to http://www.google.com. Instead, I get the Time Warner /Roadrunner / Yahoo error page – gee, we can’t find Google.com, but here’s a PAID AD you can click that will take you to Google… and after I click the ad, they can suddenly find Google again.

Now I can give the benefit of the doubt to a degree, but intentional or not, DNS performance has gotten noticeably worse since this “feature” was rolled out.

By: InjuryProne

InjuryProne — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:54:44 +0000

Sadly, I agree with SEO Milwaukee’s comment, and I guess we’d better just get used to this way of doing things, even though it seems so underhanded! So, the question remains, is there any way around this new policy/practice?

By: SEO Milwaukee

SEO Milwaukee — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:16:30 +0000

Devils advocate, but what is the problem with this? I use Time Warner and I hate them, but for other reasons. I guess I am numb from having ads thrown at me from every possible angle that nothing surprises me. I also know that I and many other people with neighbors that are not in the know don’t pay for our internet access. If it was throwing popups or trying to install something I would be pissed off, but popping a page that looks like every other parked domain.. whatever. As far as killing the goose, that will never happen. Web advertising is only going to get more and more intrusive.

By: Lance Quagmire

Lance Quagmire — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:32:11 +0000

This happened to me on Feb. 2 out of nowhere.
They do let you opt out at http://ww23.rr.com/prefs.php. However, this is still pretty lame.

By: Matt Wolf

Matt Wolf — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:38:25 +0000

That is a lame way of doing things. I would definitely complain, especially if the page I was trying to get to was not one of the links. Boo to RoadRunner.

Cheer.s

By: wii bundle

wii bundle — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:21:14 +0000

Isn’t this sort of thing Black Hat tactics? Hosting services like godaddy and domain registers do this as well. Everybody is trying to choke the last possible penny from the Internet. Eventually they will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

By: Tony Cecala

Tony Cecala — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:29:27 +0000

This unseemly practice started recently on my Verizon FIOS. I was both surprised and annoyed. Do you know of a “HOSTS” file trick that could block these?

By: Bailey

Bailey — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:36:28 +0000

Charter Communications has been doing this now for at least a couple months, and I find it highly annoying, especially considering their “results” NEVER have a link to the site that I misspelled. *roll eyes*

Personally, as a gearhead, I prefer a standard “server could not be found” result in my web browser. But if they’re going to insist on hijacking these occurrences to push me to a paid-search page, then at least show me something useful! They don’t. And that’s really, REALLY annoying.