Time Warner, Yahoo! Team Up to Cybersquat
Time Warner’s Road Runner internet service has teamed up with Yahoo to typosquat on millions of unregistered domain names.More here.
The feature from the two companies is called “Web Address Error Redirect Service” and automatically sends web users to a page full of search ads if they type in a web address that does not exist. It appears to override customer’s own preferences in their browsers for what to do if an address doesn’t exist.
Road Runner isn’t the first ISP to do this. Verizon already does it for some of its customers. Yes, this is hypocritical given that Verizon has sued typosquatters that own misspelled versions of its trademarks.
Major computer manufacturers including Gateway and Dell have similar programs with Google but are managed at the browser level.
Both Dell and Verizon are members of The Coalition of Domain Name Abuse, an organization whose charter is to stop typosquatting and cybersquatting. Yes, that’s hypocritical too.
posted by Fergie @ 2/08/2008 09:57:00 PM
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