As of a little while ago, VeriSign added a wildcard A record to the .COM and .NET TLD DNS zones. The IP address returned is 64.94.110.11, which reverses to sitefinder.verisign.com. What that means in plain English is that most mis-typed domain names that would formerly have resulted in a helpful error message now results in a VeriSign advertising opportunity. For example, if my domain name was 'somecompany.com,' and somebody typed 'oemcompany.com' by mistake, they would get VeriSign's advertising.

This will have the immediate effect of making network trouble-shooting much more difficult. Before, a mis-typed domain name in an email address, web browser, or other network configuration item would result in an obvious error message. You might not have known what to do about it, but at least you knew something was wrong. Now, though, you will have to guess. Every time.

This will make important anti-spam checks impossible, as they check on the existance of the sender domain. I wonder how long it will take untill Verisign will add advertisement to the displayed page. Or sells this page for advertisement properties. Would you like to see an Microsoft ad-filled page every time you make a typo in an URL ?

However, you can disable this feature of Verisign : just add




127.0.0.1 sitefinder.verisign.com




to your host file. Replace the IP address with one you fancy (eg Google : 216.239.39.100)