Looks like my ISP, Charter Communications, is hijacking the *. domain similar to what Verisign did a few years ago..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/16/all_your_web_typos/
I noticed it last night when I mistyped something and it redirected to their spammy useless search engine with gratuitious advertising. I’d say it was spyware, but I was running Linux at the time — last time I checked there was no spyware. Besides, it was redirecting me to a charter site, which would mean that they were the ones deploying the spyware.
I’m not sure if this is illegal or not, but its certainly not ethical, and its definitely very annoying. Looks like others are having this issue too:
http://www.computerdefense.org/?p=217
Those money-grubbing bastards! I should get DSL…
Ah! I found another Charter customer who noticed this 😉
There are two good articles at:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/blog/dailyblog/archives/2007/02/breaking_dns_wi.html
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/81791
The second well written article was generated from the discussion at:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,17871432
I am writing an Open Letter to Charter and could always use help 😉 Unlike when Verisign did the same thing and the entire world went up in flames, we Charter customers may need to start a grass roots movement ;(
Very Best,
Joey Bickel
Bay City, MI
(joeykahn)