Verisign, a major Internet player that controls most domain names, "broke the Internet" by redirecting traffic from mistyped URLs to their own advertising sites in order to increase profits.
This creates a great danger to Internet security, as the re-direct "has created a hole anyone can jump into, a bug anyone can use to hijack any domain, at any time, for any reason."
Dana Blakenhorn Blog Septebmer 17, 2003
Most of you have no idea who Verisign is, but they control most Internet domain names and have also have issued most of the secure digital certificates that allow Web sites to do secure transactions. However, for their own evil, greedy, selfish purposes, they "broke" the Internet. Ostensibly, they redirected traffic from mistyped URLs to their own site to give users a "hint" of what the URL was that they were searching for, but then they sell their ads with the increased traffic to make more profit.
In the process of redirecting traffic they "broke" fundamentals of how the Internet works. They broke the way new subscribers sign up for my newsletter. Previously if someone typed in a wrong e-mail address, which happens about 30 percent of the time, they would get an error message. However, since Verisign broke the Net, this can't be done. The only reason they could do this is that they have a government-granted monopoly and rights to redirect traffic. I sure hope that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) or the U.S. government recognizes how evil this company is and acts appropriately to take away their authority. Fortunately, tech is mighty resourceful and there will be an official bind patch issued in the next few days that works around their evil plan.
Related Articles:
Internet Network Will Give You Faster, Portable and Less Expensive Connections Internet Peaks as America's Most Important Source of Information
Internet Network Will Give You Faster, Portable and Less Expensive Connections
Internet Peaks as America's Most Important Source of Information