<font size="3">All your Web typos are belong to us </font>

Network administrators are fuming about changes made by domain registrar Verisign to the DNS system yesterday that they say violate longstanding Internet standards.

Verisign yesterday added wildcard DNS records to all .com and .net domains - redirecting surfers who get lost on the Net to a search page, called Site Finder, run by the company. Those who type in non-existent addresses will also be served up Site Finder, instead of an error message.

There's widespread concern the alterations will frustrate commonly used anti-spam techniques. Mail packages often check to see whether the domain an email is coming from is valid but with the changes all domains have suddenly become valid, frustrating the technique.

The radical, and largely unheralded, changes were made yesterday and followed up by a post by Verisign to the NANOG mailing list. This did little beyond stating that Verisign has added a "wildcard A record to the .com and .net zones" and pointing users to a white paper that Verisign has prepared.

So, Verisign has turned domain name typos into an advertising opportunity. Critics believe this is an abuse of Verisign's role, via acquired company Network Solutions, in administering the .com and .net registry DNS servers.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk