Rogers DNS hijack
I'm a Rogers Hi-Speed Internet customer. A few months ago, Rogers stopped returning failed DNS queries, and instead many DNS queries (but not all of them) redirect to *.rogers.com.
Check this out:
stevemac:~ stevex$ ping digg
PING digg.rogers.com (8.15.7.107): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.15.7.107: icmp_seq=0 ttl=48 time=82.954 ms
^C
--- digg.rogers.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 82.736/82.845/82.954/0.109 ms
stevemac:~ stevex$ ping yahoo
PING yahoo.rogers.com (67.202.252.72): 56 data bytes
^C
--- yahoo.rogers.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
stevemac:~ stevex$ ping msn
PING msn.rogers.com (8.15.7.107): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.15.7.107: icmp_seq=0 ttl=48 time=82.392 ms
^C
--- msn.rogers.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 82.392/82.392/82.392/0.000 ms
In other words, when my computer asks for the address of "digg" (not "digg.com"), Rogers says "yeah, redirect that to digg.rogers.com".
Now, if they were doing this to help me in some way, it might not be so bad. But when I type "cnn" into the address bar, and they redirect me, here's where I end up:
Yeah, according to this helpful Rogers result page, if I typed CNN into the address bar I'm probably looking for "Jack Canfield Life Coach". I don't think so.
They do identify it as a sponsored link, but it looks exactly like the regular links.
This is just a slimy thing for Rogers to do. I wonder if they make enough off the ads to pay for the loss in goodwill?