Verisign suspends 'site-squatting' service
6 October 2003
Domain name provider Verisign has agreed to drop its service that linked 'page not found' errors to its own Site Finder website.
The service, launched in September, caused immediate controversy among other Internet companies, Verisign being accused of hijacking users.
Concerns were also raised that the service inadvertently helped spammers, by guaranteeing that non-existent websites from which spam could be sent linked to target pages.
Many spammers use non-existent domain names to hide their tracks when sending unsolicited emails, and organisations could limit spam levels by blocking all mail from non-existent sites.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) claimed that Verisign's Site Finder made such spam filters ineffective, affected other automated net tools and services, and raised privacy issues.
'There have been widespread expressions of concern about the impact of these changes on the security and the stability of the Internet,' the net policy body said in a statement.
Apply for your free web assessment - get a complete health check and optimisation action plan from Weboptimiser, the experts.
Related news
|
|
Leading brand search engine marketing since 1996
Founded in 1996 as an SEO company, Weboptimiser is today one of the Internet marketing sector's best-known and most respected search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) search engine marketing companies.
With a unique portfolio of brand-friendly services, including usability, contextual advertising and web analytics, a pioneering methodology that covers all 4 stages of interaction between a web site and its visitors, we make our clients sites faster, smarter, busier and more profitable.
