Our Latest Poll:

VeriSign Halts Site Finder Amid Legal Pressure

Posted By Hollis Thomases on Oct 3rd, 2003

VeriSign Pulls Site Finder Amid Legal Pressure

VeriSign, the firm that operates the .com and .net domains of the Internet’s address system, said it would temporarily shut down a new service that makes money off the typos of Web users after the Internet’s oversight body threatened to take legal action against the company.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) President Paul Twomey sent a letter to VeriSign demanding that the company take the service down or face legal consequences. Previously, Popular Enterprises of Orlando, operator of the Netster.com search site, filed suit against Verisign, seeking an injunction barring VeriSign from running the Site Finder as well as damages of up to $100 million. Go Daddy Software, Inc. has also filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order against Site Finder.
By redirecting misspelled, non-existent, and expired domain names to Site Finder, Verisign’s own advertising-supported search service, it had incurred the wrath (and lawsuits) of several organizations. This form of “hijacking” or “DNS wildcard” may ultimately lead to a war between Verisign, AOL, Microsoft, and other ISPs and hosting companies over ownership of non-existent domain names.

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee, consisting of approximately 20 technical experts from industry and academia, issued a statement on 22 September 2003 that concluded that:

VeriSign’s change appears to have considerably weakened the stability of the Internet, introduced ambiguous and inaccurate responses in the DNS, and has caused an escalating chain reaction of measures and countermeasures that contribute to further instability.

VeriSign’s change has substantially interfered with some number of existing services which depend on the accurate, stable, and reliable operation of the domain name system.

Many email configuration errors or temporary outages which were benign have become fatal now that the wildcards exist.

Anti-spam services relied on the RCODE 3 response to identify forged email originators.

In some environments the DNS is one of a sequence of lookup services. If one service fails the lookup application moves to the next service in search of the desired information. With this change the DNS lookup never fails and the desired information is never found.

VeriSign’s action has resulted in a wide variety of responses from ISPs, software vendors, and other interested parties, all intended to mitigate the effects of the change. The end result of such a series of changes and counterchanges adds complexity and reduces stability in the overall domain name system and the applications that use it. This sequence leads in exactly the wrong direction. Whenever possible, a system should be kept simple and easy to understand, with its architectural layers cleanly separated.

According to Verisign, the company handles over 20 million incorrect queries each day. It justifies Site Finder, which also offers corrected spellings of these queries, as a “powerful tool that improves Web navigation for users.” But multiply those 20 million mistakes by per click ad revenue, and it quickly adds up to a pretty penny earned for a government granted service.

Critics argued that Site Finder eliminates user choice, gives a private company too much control over online commerce and could violate longstanding Internet standards.

Bookmark this:

« Previous Article | Next Article »

Web Ad.vantage is a full-service online marketing company with core competencies in search engine optimization, PPC Campaign Management and online media buying. Visit our Internet Marketing Services section to learn more about our full range of services.

WebAdvantage.net encourages the reprinting of our marketing tips and articles. Before doing so, however, please contact us at for permission to do so. The company bio located above is required to accompany any reprint. Thank you in advance for your professional courtesy.