Yeah, I haven't been here in a while. But time to be pissed off. I've always been a fan of address line searching from IE. Call me lazy, but it just seems more efficient. Tonight, I punched in some lyrics of a song on the address line, expecting
Goggle to pop up and answer the "who sang the song" question.
Imagine my surprise when a
Charter (my ISP) search engine popped up results, complete with a full page of "sponsored results" before the actual results. After an hour of registry searching, reloading registry entries for Google address line searching, spyware searching and virus scanning, I turned to the Internet.
Ironically, it was
Charter's intercepting search engine that found the answer. Apparently,
Charter has decided that they know better when it comes to my preferred search engine. So, they're set their DNS boxes to intercept the call made from the address line search (which I believe travels to a msn site before the preferred site is called). Details on the intercept can be found in
Tony Bradley's article .
I tried the Opt Out button tied to
Charter's intercept site. The Opt Out button puts a 2 month cookie on your machine, supposedly allowing you to return to normal address line searching. First, I purge cookies daily, so that fix sucks. Second, having to renew the Opt Out cookie every 2 months sucks. And finally, it doesn't work - I get a Microsoft site regardless of the IE preference settings.
So, I called customer service. I had to educate the tech service dude about address line searching. He couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to search from the address line. At one point, he was confusing the address line with an installed add-in search bar (which I don't use). He also questioned my use / choice of virus scanning software. I finally had to give him the URL for
Charter's redirect page, and educate him about the OptOut option. The best he could offer was "sending my concern to the next level" at
Charter.
Then, things went down the drain. I indicated that his solution was unacceptable. I told him
Charter has no right to decide what search engine I can use from the address line of the browser. I indicated that his solution did nothing to allow me to use my machine and software the way it was designed. His response: "Well, then I'll just [drive] down to the DNS server myself. I'm in Canada...I'm sure its not too far." I demanded a supervisor, and then was placed in on-hold purgatory.
After
I realized that the agent had no intent of letting me talk to a supervisor, I hung up and called back. The agent I spoke to sounded like he was in India, he quickly connected me to a supervisor (who sounded like she was in Russia or a related Eastern Bloc county), to whom I complained about an idiot in Canada.
Screw the customer service folks - I would have been surprised if they could have figured out how to spell Internet. But this whole ideal of an ISP using their DNS to intercept specific web site calls and redirecting them with no warning - big slipperly slope.
CHARTER - pay attention. You are pissing people off. There are plenty of high speed ISPs available - service is a commodity.
Charter's got enough issues already - they didn't get on board with the combined TV/ISP/VoIP strategy as fast as their competitors, so know they're having to manage big debt to get infrastructure up to the competitive level. I guess they're supplementing income with their redirect to a Yahoo sponsored ad farm.
SBC - send me some rate plans. Looks like I'm coming your way.
Labels: Charter, DNS, Hijack
