[Osiris]

Stop Internet Service Providers Redirecting DNS Errors

Chance is that your Internet Service Provider has implemented a system that will display a search page whenever a url gets mistyped. The technique behind those interceptions is simple. Most Internet users make use of the DNS servers of their Internet Service Providers. These DNS servers turn the names that the users type in into IP addresses. If the name does not exist then the DNS servers cannot perform that lookup usually resulting in a “not found” or “problem loading page” error in the web browser. Some ISPs have decided to route all requests that cannot be looked up to a page of their own which most of the time displays search results for the term along with advertisement.
The reason for doing this is simple: cash. ISPs earn money if you come to those search pages and use them to find what you are looking for. More often than not those search pages are not helpful at all. Here is why. Most of the time users know where they want to go if they mistype a url, say ghackss.net instead of ghacks.net. All that they would need to do to fix the error is by editing the url.