Report: Verisign halts Sitefinder redirection scheme

[Marc Schneiders]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, at 16:26 [=GMT-0400], Chris Chiu wrote:

> Domain name giant Verisign has reportedly shutdown its
> controversial Sitefinder system, at least for the time being.
> Under this system, people who mistyped various .com and .net names
> were sent to a special section of the Verisign website (rather
> than an error page) which provided suggestions as to the correct
> names of desired webpages and included a Verisign Sitefinder
> search-engine.

Maybe it is also relevant to mention that ICANN told Verisign to do
so, or it would take legal action against Verisign.

I wonder why it took ICANN so long to write the letter. It cannot be
that the lawyers needed so much time to understand what a '*'
(the notation for the wildcard in DNS zone files) is.

I am glad ICANN took the step, but a bit worried about the slow speed.
What if something really threatening the stability of the internet
comes up in some company's mind? Say, they stop resolving some group
of domains but don't tell anybody.