[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

[bryant]

VeriSign, the curators of the .org and .com domains, just abused the living hell out of their power. As of this morning, any time you try to look up a domain name that doesn’t exist, you get an IP for one of their hosts.

In layman’s terms, this means that if you mistype the domain portion of a URL in your browser — let’s say you type http://www.yankeeessuck.com — it’ll redirect to a VeriSign page. It also means that if you mistype the domain portion of an email address, your mailer will attempt to deliver that email to a VeriSign server. Most likely it’ll just bounce… but there’s no guarantee. Hope you weren’t trying to send mail to a user who happens to exist over there.

The appropriate agency for complaints is ICANN, who oversees domain names. The ICANN email address for complaints is comments@icann.org. The ICANN phone number is (310) 823-9358. The ICANN fax number is (310) 823-8649. The ICANN address is 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330, Marina del Rey, CA 90292.

Grrr.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness we have ICANN to safeguard the namespace. I'm certain they'll ignore our complaints in the order received.

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

amokk mentions a possible side effect (http://www.livejournal.com/users/amokk/110237.html) of Verisign's new behavior in his LJ. Does that sound as though it makes sense?

[bryant]

Yep, that's one of the things which will break.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Something else weird, although probably unrelated: I got a renewal message from them this morning for the domains I have registered. It says "Services due to expire - act now. Don't let your services expire."

The expiration dates on the domains is 7/14/04.

What's up with that?

[bryant]

Same deal you get with magazine subscriptions. A lot of people just believe you when you say "Hey, act now!" even though the subscription/domain won't expire for another year or two.