My ISP, the hapless Karoo a subsidiary of KCom, has decided to redirect mistyped URL's to a search pgae at Ask.com. By forcing their user-base to automatically opt-in to a search engine they are obviously watching peoples connections. Any mistyped URL will not show the proper 404 page not found page but will instead show the Ask.com search engine. This breaks several rules on several levels.
If I wanted to go to a search engine I would type that search engine URL in the browser URL bar. I do not want to be forced to do this just because I typed something wrong. We use a router here and the first time this forced redirection hapoened to my son he asked me what the hell was going on. Because he uses MS Windows he thought he had got a virus. I am sure many other users of Karoo experienced something along the same lines. They do have an opt-out option which they have everso helpfully shown how to do but only for the crap routers they support.
This hi-jacking of people Internet connections is quite simply wrong. It IS hijacking of peoples connections. Nothing more, nothing less and because it is hijacking of peoples connections it should be declared illegal to do. There used to be an RFC that declared intransit Internet traffic should not be hijacked. It seems these days as if ISP's quite simply have no regard for their customer base whatsoever.
They, Karoo, obviously get a payback for this as I can see no other reason for them doing it.
I now use opendns for my dns requests so this level of underhandedness will not catch me any more. i know opendns do something similar but at least it is MY chose to use them. No-one has forced me to use the facilities OpenDNS offer unlike my ISP. Karoo a subsiduary of KCom who have foistered this on their customers.
The fight begins to regain control of our in-transit Internet traffic.
If I wanted to go to a search engine I would type that search engine URL in the browser URL bar. I do not want to be forced to do this just because I typed something wrong. We use a router here and the first time this forced redirection hapoened to my son he asked me what the hell was going on. Because he uses MS Windows he thought he had got a virus. I am sure many other users of Karoo experienced something along the same lines. They do have an opt-out option which they have everso helpfully shown how to do but only for the crap routers they support.
This hi-jacking of people Internet connections is quite simply wrong. It IS hijacking of peoples connections. Nothing more, nothing less and because it is hijacking of peoples connections it should be declared illegal to do. There used to be an RFC that declared intransit Internet traffic should not be hijacked. It seems these days as if ISP's quite simply have no regard for their customer base whatsoever.
They, Karoo, obviously get a payback for this as I can see no other reason for them doing it.
I now use opendns for my dns requests so this level of underhandedness will not catch me any more. i know opendns do something similar but at least it is MY chose to use them. No-one has forced me to use the facilities OpenDNS offer unlike my ISP. Karoo a subsiduary of KCom who have foistered this on their customers.
The fight begins to regain control of our in-transit Internet traffic.
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