Bell Employs DNS Redirection…. GRRRR….
One of my customers called me to ask why all of a sudden she was seeing an advertising laden search portal when she mistyped a web address. I did a quick Google search and discovered why that was the case. According to this thread on DSLReports.com, that Bell has joined Rogers in doing DNS redirection. What Bell is doing is hoping that you mistype the address of a website in your browser so that they can use that to display ads (and as a result, make some extra cash). I’m not a fan of it because of the potential security implications.
Fortunately there’s an easy fix. Use the OpenDNS servers instead. At least when you mistype something, it tries to find you the correct web page and any advertisements that get displayed are for the purpose of keeping OpenDNS alive. If you don’t want to see the ads, no problem. You can sign up for a FREE account and then set up the option to turn off “typo correction”. You go in to the Dashboard at http://www.opendns.com and select “settings” and then “typo corrections” and then uncheck the box “enable typo correction.” You then get a standard browser error page. Oh, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. OpenDNS is WAY FASTER than Bell or Rogers DNS servers and WAY MORE RELIABLE too. Finally, you can filter out things like porn or other “evil” content. It’s totally worth the switch.
In the meantime if DNS redirection is something that annoys you, then perhaps you should dump ISPs that like this like yesterday’s garbage. Clearly they don’t have your best interests in mind.
August 6, 2009 at 8:03 am
I couldn’t have put it better myself. If only internet services weren’t an oligopoly, then I would dump bell without a thought.
I didn’t know about opendns until now but it may be worth a shot. The only thing that might be of concern is the ability to collect history more easily by opening an account.
December 12, 2019 at 9:25 am
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July 5, 2020 at 9:10 am
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January 11, 2021 at 9:00 am
[…] URLs to their own search page. Presumably to make a few bucks. And Rogers main competition Bell was caught doing something similar. The problem is that this sort of behavior by ISP’s is a huge security risk. Now I don’t […]