Web Address Help

BT have introduced their 'web address help' service. It aids users with spelling mistakes that are made when typing in a URL.

I noticed tonight after the location bar search in Firefox kept on forwarding me to the BT Broadband web site.

You can opt out. However, anyone else feel that this is a privacy concern and should strictly be an opt in feature?

More information: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14244...

Edited by deleted (Mon 06-Sep-10 21:06:25)

A number of toolbars I believe do similar, and as the toolbars are hooked into the browser they may see as much.

Two sides to the coin, the number of sites that have misleading sites siting on misspelt domains means an ISP may feel it is providing a service.

Bing certainly does what the BT system does.

I'd guess BT profit from click throughs.

There was a big fuss when the (I think) .com registrar did the same thing (send unresolvable addresses to their selected sites). They backed down and removed the "service". It's a bit different when OpenDNS do it because you don't have to use their DNS servers. An ISP doing it falls between the two. If I used BT I'd opt out.

They get to "see" the address you go to anyway (whether it be a typo or not) and so I don't see it as a privacy issue (unless there is a person doing all the typo checking, which I doubt).

So it's only really a problem if you have a service that relies upon getting no resolution when trying to look up a non existent domain.

They are acting as a middle man for requests, they even run the service for SSL address, which is not on.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A number of toolbars I believe do similar, and as the toolbars are hooked into the browser they may see as much.

Two sides to the coin, the number of sites that have misleading sites siting on misspelt domains means an ISP may feel it is providing a service.

I think VirginMedia has the same feature.

No they are not, they are acting as a source of DNS information, and pointing all NULL DNS responses at their own servers, presumably to get paid for click throughs, but possibly simply to provide a service to the less technically literate.

All DNS responses will come for the DNS servers you use, whether those servers do this NULL redirection or not.

as I say, it is nothing particularly sinister.

And DNS is needed for SSL and none SSL domain names alike, unless you wish to connect to https://193.108.74.126/ instead of https://www.hsbc.co.uk/

Edited by deleted (Tue 07-Sep-10 21:41:38)