Broadband customers of Virgin Media UK could soon find their un-resolvable DNS requests (i.e. occurs when you type an incorrect website address into your browser) being redirected (hijacked) to the operators own specially crafted search page, complete with adverts and suggested alternative website results to try.

To explain, every human readable website address actually starts out life as an IP number (e.g. 123.56.23.89) and the Domain Name Servers (DNS) then translate this into human readable form; for example: 123.56.23.89 might become Google.com . However, if you type Google.meh the DNS server will become confused and cause your browser throw up an error.

Virgin Media's solution seeks to replace these - admittedly ineffective - browser error messages with their own search engine results. However the method has traditionally been unpopular, not least because it hands control of the results to an ISP that could easily choose to manipulate them and give more imputes to specific websites of its own choosing.

In addition most of the DNS Redirection methods we've seen are rarely any good at predicting what website you were intending to reach, which can cause further confusion (e.g. the list of suggested alternatives become useless). For this and other reasons, such as standards compliance and interoperability, most ISPs prefer not to adopt such measures.

Mercifully The Register reports that Virgin Media will offer an opt-out option for those who don't want such a system on their connection. Consumers could also swap their ISPs DNS servers for the free and often more effective ones provided by OpenDNS.org, which also use a similar redirection method, but at least you have more control and choice over that.

In reality we suspect that most consumers will not be too concerned by the new “service”, especially if Virgin Media actually manages to come up with one that.. well.. works properly; then it might even be helpful, but we have our doubts.