Performance ISP

Earthlink Redirection Service Under Fire

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Earthlink has a problem on their hands. The company, who is no stranger to controversy, is now under fire for their attempt to redirect typos of URLs into advertising dollars.

The vulnerability was in a service called Barefruit, which Earthlink has been using since August 2006 to return Web pages with search terms and advertising to customers who mistype a domain name in their browser.

Barefruit, which is based in London, operates a service that works with Domain Name Servers, (DNS) which are used by the browser to translate domain names, such as yahoo.com, into numerical Internet Protocol addresses. Typically, when a browser asks a DNS server for a nonexistent Internet address — adsewrds.yahoo.com for example — the DNS server returns an error message indicating that no such address exists. With Barefruit’s servers, the user is told that the address does exist, and is then sent to a Web page that displays advertising and suggested search terms

Earthlink claims it has already patched the bug and made no effort to explain why the service was no safe.