Posted: 25th Mar, 2008 By: MarkJ
Hull based broadband ISP Karoo, which is part of the K-Com Group (Kingston Communications), has started hijacking mistyped customer URLs' and redirecting them to the Ask.com search engine.
Hijacking a mistyped website address is something that only a handful of providers do and is usually frowned upon by both customers and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards. Naturally the ISP puts a positive spin on it:
Kingston has implemented a DNS system for error traffic that re-directs some error traffic to a search engine results page. This helps you find what you want to search for more easily, directly from your browser address bar.
When you type an unknown website address into your address bar and KCs DNS servers cannot resolve the error, we re-direct the traffic to a search engine results page, so that you can find what you are looking for more easily.
Mercifully Karoo has offered a method to opt-out of the hijacking, which is detailed at the bottom of this page:
http://www.karoo.co.uk/helpandsupport/dnsoptout/Alternatively we frequently recommend the free OpenDNS system, which is an excellent DNS server replacement for all ISPs, especially if you have trouble visiting some websites:
http://www.opendns.org