EarthLink Establishes Their Own "Site Finder"

Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."

Profit is the Motive

I visited the earthlink help page and noticed that it contained four things.

1. A box showing suggested search terms
2. A box in which I could search (through Yahoo!) for my page.
3. Two banner ads.

When I enter in a term, say 'guitar' [earthlink-help.net], I get a page with yet more ads and sponsored links but still directed through earthlink help to Yahoo!

I wasn't born yesterday, I understand the concepts of paid search, sponsored links & banner ads. They generate revenue and insult me. They waste real estate on websites and obscure my information that I would prefer to harvest un assaulted by sales pitches.

I'm betting I'm not the first to say this, but this is insane.

If they wanted to be 'helpful' they would provide you with some sort of new service. In this solution, they are simply deciding which search engine you will use and cashing in off of it also. If we want to search for another answer, I think we know where to go. If you doubt our abilities to select a preferred search engine, at least give us some choices. Do you know what happens in Firefox when I pull down the search engine on the upper right? I can select from a number of sites.

"By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes."

You're not improving anything, you're laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Profit is the Motive

Agreed on all points, but it doesn't matter. Picture the average earthlink user in your head and then realize half are dumber than the person you're picturing. Maybe 5% of earthlink users will realize and give a damn, the other 95% are just happy they have something new to click that may take them somewhere that may be useful. An error page is a dead end for them that makes them think they've screwed up.

A best friend used to work in marketing for earthlink and told me about the users they brought in to test websites, systems, etc... I was absolutely horrified and now weep for the future.

Re:Profit is the Motive

I, OTOH, was working for Earthlink when the merger came. Our stock price dropped by well over 40%, never to recover. When I saw the way we were expected to configure Mindspring customers, I was horrified, because Mindspring was, among other things, using three DNS servers on the same Class C; one router goes and no DNS! I have to say that at least half the things I found bad about Earthlink in all the time I was there, came from Mindspring. I'm sure your POV is valid, and I'm not disputing you. I just wanted to show things from the other side.

That being said, even before the Earthlink/Mindspring thing, Earthlink had changed from a fairly savvy ISP to a company that jumped on every bandwagon that came down the pike without asking itself if the idea was any good. Thinking back, I suspect that about a year or so before the merger, the marketing department got control of the company, and it really showed. This is just another example of what happens when technical decisions are made by people with neither the undestanding to do the right thing nor an interest in learning what the issues really are.

Re:Profit is the Motive

Google doesn't fuck with the RFCs to make its profit.

Re:Broken DNS Servers vs. Broken Web Caching

There's nothing fuzzy about what's actually happening. I can ping any random string of garbage and get a response. That's no Web-proxy problem; it's a fundamental breakage of DNS.

The difference is...

Earthlink subscribers can opt by not being Earthlink subscribers any longer. When Verisign did it, it affected everyone because they've been granted a monopoly on certain domain extensions.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

Simple. Continue to use Earthlink, but don't use their DNS. Just run your own dns server locally. Or, point to another open dns server.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

Only terrorists would run their own DNS server.

1 Cancellation

I've kept an Earthlink dial-up account in case I took my notebook on a road trip. I haven't used it in a while though, and have been meaning to cancel it. I think I'll go ahead and take care of that now, and I'll make a point of telling the rep about this.

icann should ban this

There has to be some way that this sort of crap can be banned, it breaks the internet, because the error code is now a "valid" page!

The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

Here on /. the general zeitgeist follows what is commonly called the "Unix way". Things should be kept small and only do one thing, but do it well. Developers can gain power by tying these simpler components together.

The other way of thinking can be termed the "Microsoft way" or even better "Apple way". This viewpoint believes that integrating things into easy-to-use applications leads to greater productivity gains as well as a more pleasant user experience. Instead of giving a ton of pieces to the user and expect them to make sense of it all, this viewpoint presents a fully-formed solution to the user.

The Unix Way zealots will tell you that undermining this dirt road area of the internet by returning useful results instead of an error message is bad. The Microsoft/Apple Way zealots will argue that something useful is always better than an inscrutable error message.

The side you fall on is really a viewpoint issue, and not a technical one. There is no technical reason why Earthlink's move couldn't be worked around, if that is really a good solution. There's also no technical reason why Earthlink needs to go ahead with something like this when search engines are already built into most modern browsers.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

This is not about the unix way or the apple way. This is about the Computer Science way: returning an error when an error occurs. Dealing with the error is an user agent, not an ISP responsibility. Earthlink should have made this opt-in (they can spare a coupe IPs for a couple more DNS servers, can't they). I run PPC linux and mac on linux over it occasionally, so I know what you probably meant, it still does not apply here.

So what?

How is this worse than all those "search engine" sites squatting on unused and misspelled dowmains? At least earthlink is trying to provide some meaningful info to their customers.

There are plenty of freely accessible public DNS servers; let those old school "do it our way cuz that's the way it's always been done" zealots learn to drive their own machines and stop telling everyone else how to run their lives and businesses.

Re:So what?

Earthlink aren't providing meaningful information to customers - they're just trying to make money.

Of course, that's what businesses are for, so as you say, if they want to do it, they should be entirely entitled to do so. However:

a) It's not fair on those who have paid for an existing service to have the nature of this service changed on them without warning - many people feel they are now getting a poorer service.

b) They should at the very least have provided an opt-out system for those who prefer untainted DNS that works in the way the internet standards require it to work. Then people with firewall, anti-spam or other systems that this change breaks wouldn't be so up in arms.

If my ISP did this, I'd leave them. Luckily my ISP is more sane.

Jolyon

Stupidity seems to be contagious

Has Earthlink learnt NOTHING from VeriSign's debacle?
Blatantly ignoring established policy (if a DNS-request does not resolve the response must be "DNS-request does not resolve" not "here it is"). Let's not forget all the privacy issues with hundreds of thousands of e-mails, normally being undeliverable because the sender made a typo in the adress, now end up in their inbox.
Hmmm... if I were to DDOS www.this-site-does-not-exist-but-earthlink-resolve s-it-anway.something would I act criminally? I mean, the site does not exist, and Earthlink just poaches its DNS adress...

Who are these people?

By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes.

Anybody who authorized this on a technical level should be packing groceries, not presiding over an ISP's infrastructure.

The address you entered could not be found.

Please try the related content suggestions and paid advertisements below, or try another search.
You entered "http://www.slashdot.org/".

Advertisements for cow steroids, cars, and free computers followed.

Stay In the Box

The place for offering "help" in the user interface is in the client software. Perhaps the DNS error needs a metadata field for offering messages, perhaps hyperlinked, for exception handling. But those must be presented by the user agent, like the browser, not tricking the browser into "passthru" to server misdirection. That violates the DNS specs. And makes that essential global system vulnerable to unpredicted failures when dependant systems get nonstandard results.

These ISPs attract marketing people with dreams of empire and ignorance of Internet. Execs put them in power over the engineers, and just rip across the careful system designs that make the Net work. Then they cry when their stuff doesn't work, and blame the engineers.

But they compete with each other on how well their stuff works. As long as we can switch ISPs among a pool with critical mass size, they'll exploit each others' weaknesses to grab customers. These "DNS hijacks" are going to be with us forever, avoidable only while we have a choice between independent, competing ISPs.

Positive Blogs?

RE: "Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive" Hm. Sounds like \.

The default Microsoft one is lousy too.

The default MSIE result is lousy too. What I would LOVE to see happen is that, if I get an URL that does not exist, UI control returns to the address window, so I can type another one (most likely just by correcting a wrong spelling). That is what I always do anyway. I never use the useless MSN Search that comes up by default.

Opendns

I don't know if your wondering, but opendns (http://opendns.com/) does this as well. Its another way on income. This is one of their explanations: http://www.opendns.com/faq/#is_it_like_site_finder [opendns.com] . Its not as bad when an isp does this compared to the whole world, and on the root dns servers like verisign did, which could of slowed down the entire .com/.net space. If users of earthlink have a problem with that, they can simply switch dns servers or start there own dns server easilly.

My site's been hijacked!

Just realised that because my DNS server is temporarily offline due to a broken switch, anyone on earthlink trying to access one of my sites will make earthlink money from banner advertising.

Horrible.

big brother is watching you

I'm not on earthlink and don't have this problem but if it redirects to earthlink-help.net you can just add that entry to your hosts file no? Sure, sure if you run your own server but for most users...

This is terrible because most of the time the DNS error is just a simple typo, and most users don't need to see 50 links to websites that are entirely irrelevant to what I want. I think we need legislation that forces ISPs to just provide an internet connection and do nothing else. Quickly takes care of the net neutrality problem too.

I wonder if this is even legal because they are now monitoring search terms, and that could rather quickly turn to logging.

Just another co-opted standard...

See also: HTTP + port 80 being used for everything from chat to file sharing to video streaming to RPC. Add to that HTTP status 200 + HTML being increasingly used to represent every possible response status.

Solution: Use a different DNS server in settings

I noticed the Earthlink change this week and immediately put a non-Earthlink DNS server at the top of my DNS servers list. My browser now returns the proper "can't find server" message and not Earthlink's advertising. (If you do this, please consider the ethical implications of using another provider's DNS server if you do not subscribe to that provider.)

Earthlink you say?

"xenu.net"
"Can't find xxxx.net - Would you like a Free Personality Test?"

Money grab

This is a money grab plain and simple. I prefer to get a 404 response when I fat finger a URL and then use my brain to figure out that I might have fat fingered the domain. I don't want to ever be redirected to a commercial search engine not of my choice. For one, is the search engine going to remain agnostic and return a naked list without censorship or insertion of their own interest? Or is it going to push a preferred list of commercial site owners that paid a premium to have their site show up on a list for people that fat finger? The other money grab here is that now competitors have a way to associate themselves with a site that already did the hard work of creating the interest for the user to type in the URL. This seems to be powerful for what would be ordinarily a site that does not exist for the user; isn't it powerful to create something out of nothing? When I want to find competitors on a subject or for a site, I directly go to a search engine. This seems like opportunism. For instance, if I type in www.McDonards.com and I am redirected to a search engine that interprets my mistake that I want to look up fast food or hamburgers, a search engine can now affiliate with McDonalds other hanmburger restaurants and fast food. It is quite possible these competitors did not invest in marketting like McDonalds to create the impulse for a user to visit their website. However, with Earthlink's redirect to their search engine, a competitor can pay a small fee, nothing probably compared to what McDonalds pays in advertising, and they are instantly associated with McDonalds message even if it is a tiny amount. It is certainly more than what the previously nothing-site had in the user's mind before the redirect. This is hijacking. Also, you have an adsense type thing where advertisers can pay even more premium to jump on the coat tails of someone elses marketting.

Do you really expect Earthlink to be honest about its motives? When does the customer ever come first in a for profit company? This service costs money and customers aren't paying more, so this is Earthlink's business development and it will probably net Earthlink more money at the expense of spamming their customers with paid ads and advertising of sites that wouldn't have normally occurred in the course of things. 404 does not advertise, it tells you that you made a mistake.

Solution that'll keep both sides happy...

Set up two DNS addresses: one with the service, one without. In the setup instructions, state that to turn off the site finder service, point your DNS manually to www.xxx.yyy.zzz instead of using DHCP to configure it.

-b.

If they want to do this, and not get flamed...

If they want to do something like this, and avoid getting flamed for it, then they really need to do something like the following:

• A simple message: e.g. "This domain has not yet been registered", or "The domain was not found"
• Suggestions for sites that the user was actually looking for (e.g. www.slashodt.org --> "were you looking for slashdot.org?"
• _no_ banner ads, or other adverts - otherwise they would just be bulk domain squatters.
• Maybe things like search boxes (with a choice of search engines), but they shouldn't profit from them.

... although even then, they'd probably be pushing it.

What's the problem?

I don't understand the uproar. Isn't this just an ISP-wide 404 page?

When you dial a non-existant telephone number you get an ear piercing tone, you have to hang up, and start all over again.

Maybe it's all just a matter of personal preference?

Re:What's the problem?

When you dial a non-existant telephone number you get an ear piercing tone, you have to hang up, and start all over again.

Or we get a recording "doo-dah-dee. We're sorry - the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again."

We don't get "This recording is sponsored by Gromyko's Widget Works of Belle PPlain, Wisconsin, North American Wireless, and Joe's Pizza. You have dialed 555-1234. If you meant 554-1234, Smith, John, press 1, if you meant 556-1234, Mierzwiak, James, press 2, or if you meant 555-2233, Yung, M., press 3?"

Not to give the phone company ideas or anything :/

-b.

Even Worse - It's Inconsistent

Two queries, one after the other. First it does its "sitefinder," then it gives NXDOMAIN, and seems to alternate randomly...

#1:
> host www.yahoo.coma ns3.mindspring.com
Using domain server:
Name: ns3.mindspring.com
Address: 207.69.188.187#53
Aliases:

www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.93
www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.94
www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.95
www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.90
www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.91
www.yahoo.coma has address 209.86.66.92

#2
> host www.yahoo.coma ns3.mindspring.com
Using domain server:
Name: ns3.mindspring.com
Address: 207.69.188.187#53
Aliases:

Host www.yahoo.coma not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Fight fire with fire

If they want to play that game then maybe you should just use:

http://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]

They have easy to use instructions for changing your computer to point to their servers.

If you don't like their service, you can always revert back to what your are annoyed with now...

I have been using them for more than a month with no problems.

We got bit by this Friday

Attempting to test VPN-related DNS lookups with a business partner.

I IMMEDIATELY called earthlink business T1 support and the guy on the phone had no idea what I was talking about.

Why would a company roll out something like this WITHOUT telling its support people and without letting customers know in advance? Why do they not have an opt out option?

I'm in the process of going over the contract for our T1 to see if it's early enough to break (the service was purchased before I came on board but only by a month or so).

I'll get a Speakeasy T1 and be done with it. Why is it so damn hard to find a provider who gives you IP with no bullshit?

the web is not the internet...

... but ISPs keep treating it like it is. If this kind of web-browser-error-messages-are-so-hard-to-understa nd-whaaaa-mommmy-hold-my-hand problem is so important, it can be done using proxying. Just have everyone who doesn't know how to type or can't understand the message "the domain ww.exampel.com couldn't be found" set the proxy settings in their browser. Or if you know your user base is composed of a bunch of idiots, use transparent proxying (obviously less effective with https traffic, but then significant changes to DNS, such as this is, effectively breaks https and what little trust you do get from https anyway). Can't proxy settings be served via DHCP or something too? This would provide all the advantages of dynamic configurations based on user/client machine (mac address) without even having to walk non-technical users through the process of changing their proxy settings in the browser.

On the other hand, if SRV records [ietf.org] had been used initially to publicize HTTP servers, then only those records would need to be overloaded to provide this kind of service. At least then it would be restricted to DNS queries related to HTTP traffic, although still not ideal.

Nothing new

> a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder

History keeps repeating itself again, and again, and again... Einstein was right: human stupidity seems infinite.

I use Earthlink

I use Earthlink, and this annoys me to no end.

Well, it wouldn't be *that* bad if it wasn't also accompanied by a downturn in DNS quality. In the last 48 hours, Earthlink's shiny new DNS system returned a "Site not found" for the following domains:

1) news.yahoo.com
2) spreadsheet.google.com
3) www.myspace.com

The system must cache too, because I couldn't access news.yahoo.com for at least 30 minutes after I got the first incorrect NXDOMAIN response. If this doesn't improve after the holiday weekend, I'm going to cancel my account...

Pissed.

Simple solution for ISPs

ASK the consumer if they want to do things the "traditional" way or if they want to do it the "better, exclusive {insert ISP name here}" way. Make sure the consumer can change this option at any time.

Savvy consumers will opt for the traditional way and get very-desirable DNS errors, suckers will go for the name-brand way and get "helpful" suggestions chock-full-of-ads.

Not just Earthlink

I use Cavalier Telephone [cavtel.net] and they started this practice a few weeks ago. First I thought it was a bug in Firefox (my google search bar not working). Then I spent 2 hours checking for a virus or spyware. After that, I tried another DNS server and realized the problem. I never expected a small DSL provider to do this kinda crud.

Looks like paid search placement from Yahoo

If I didn't know any better, this would look like paid search routing. As in, Yahoo paid Earthlink to put a search box on this result page. Then Earthlink goes as far as to place banners and skyscrapers as well. All things considered, it smacks of financial desperation, since other posters in this discussion have pointed out just how much this behavior does not follow proper routing protocol.

Mistyped porn sites and phising sites?

Do they allow porn sites(with slightly misspelled names of popular websites) and phishing sites go through? If I was Earthlink I would put a "hey, maybe you mistyped this URL" website going for known sites like that.

Ridiculous.

Good Lord, they're redirecting people to their search page... at the DNS level?! Is that even legal? It certainly shouldn't be.

If I want to respond to NXDOMAIN by going to a search page, great. There's software that will let me do that. If you want to help me, point me to the software. (Or to the options in the software that I'm already using, as the case may be.) Let me decide.

If you take the decision out of my hands by hiding the NXDOMAIN response and forcing upon me the decision patronize a site that is profitable to EarthLink and tell me you're doing it to help me out... you're a worse liar than my girlfriend's kid!

Worse yet, a downstream DNS server is going to cache your bullshit response, preventing users behind such a server from reaching the erstwhile nonexistent domain even when it does come online! Of course, you see that as a good thing, because you're sure they're rather be going to your site than the domain they actually typed into their browser, right?

Do something about it

send feedback [earthlink.net] to earthlink, to let them know what you think about this.

Earthlink does provide an opt out...

...in the form of an alternate DNS. 202.27.184.3 and 202.27.184.5

Of course, I used their "chat" window to get that info, which rewarded me with a Dell text ad at the end of the session. I guess shoveling ads at subscribers is the new business model over at Earthlink.

less useful

" it's no skin off my back, and it's more useful than "server not found"."

"Server not found" is actually more useful. Who is in charge here, you or the browser? If I want to go to "www.nascatr.com", instead of "www.nascar.com", that's my choice. The browser should not try to override my choice or second-guess me. The most it should do is make recommendations in the error page, and make it easy for me to correct my mistake.

Re:Downmod me to hell, but...

NXDOMAIN HTTP etc.. lalala..

Would help if this guy actually knew anything about the http protocol, not to mention the dns protocol..

since when?...

"The system is specifically configured to handle only NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic as it is being returned to the user's browser and to not impact email and other non-web-browsing traffic."

Since when is it supposed to be OK for an ISP to hijack and damage the information coming back to a browser? If this is OK, then ISP's should be able to destroy email and non-browsing data as well. Let the browser display what is being sent to it, thank you. I have no problem with Internet tools such as browsers doing what I tell them to do, even if I make mistakes and tell them the "wrong" thing. Accuracy = ease.

Re:Downmod me to hell, but...

Read a little further down where the guy admits that the technical people corrected him on that "NXDOMAIN HTTP" garbage.

this doesn't just affect HTTP

The biggest problem with this is not the ads (though they are annoying). This DNS hack doesn't just affect HTTP, it affects every applicati