Virginmedia doing a transparent proxy all of a sudden??!

JBod

JBod

JBod

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Isn't this just DNS stuff, rather than proxying?

Can't see the massive harm in it - if it's not going to resolve anyway, it doesn't really bother me if I get a different error page rather than the standard minimal one.
 
Cobertizo said:
Isn't this just DNS stuff, rather than proxying?

Can't see the massive harm in it - if it's not going to resolve anyway, it doesn't really bother me if I get a different error page rather than the standard minimal one.
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They are tracking what domains you are looking up and redirecting you to their own page with advertisement. Smells like home cooked phorm to me.
 
I do not seem to be part of this scheme yet.
It may well be that you are part of the trial.
Bit sucky if you mistype a URL and it redirects you changing the header line, thus not enabling swift editing to the correct URL.


-edit

I was just able to opt out however, without ever be on the system, so we'll see how this runs.
Able to opt out without having to log into customer zone also.
 
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JBod said:
They are tracking what domains you are looking up and redirecting you to their own page with advertisement. Smells like home cooked phorm to me.
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That's not at all what it looks like to me. You use their DNS, which is perfectly normal, but when no match is found it points you to an error site with ads. Nothing like Phorm, which truly tracked historic usage from what I understand.
 
Cobertizo said:
That's not at all what it looks like to me. You use their DNS, which is perfectly normal, but when no match is found it points you to an error site with ads. Nothing like Phorm, which truly tracked historic usage from what I understand.
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Yet you can opt out? So they are clearly tracking you by your cable modem mac address (hence the - re-opt-out when changing modem clause). That is slightly more than DNS.
 
OpenDNS do exactly the same thing.

Any request for a domain that doesn't exist or their nameservers aren't responding you get results from Google provided by OpenDNS... they make money from this. That's effectively OpenDNS's business model... or did you think they were doing it all for free? :p
 
JBod said:
Yet you can opt out? So they are clearly tracking you by your cable modem mac address (hence the - re-opt-out when changing modem clause). That is slightly more than DNS.
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It's absolutely nothing more than DNS with a way of ensuring once you opt out, you're out. On Virgin you don't have a truly static IP, so how else do you propose they make sure once you've opted out you stay opted out if your IP changes?

This seems harmless enough. Some people will find it useful and keep it, some people will find it annoying and intrusive and opt out. I honestly can't see the problem here.
 
daz said:
OpenDNS do exactly the same thing.

Any request for a domain that doesn't exist or their nameservers aren't responding you get results from Google provided by OpenDNS... they make money from this. That's effectively OpenDNS's business model... or did you think they were doing it all for free? :p
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I know that, but at least it's more useful as it gives you search results from Yahoo!, and I'd imagine it's less obtrusive than the Virgin one.
 
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It's not any form of tracking more than, er, them being able to track DNS activity. Instead of returning NXDOMAIN they're returning an IP to one of their servers. Simples - just a way for them to earn money.

I've disabled it as if I make a typo I generally know and don't want to waste time loading some crappy page.
 
Strange: I haven't (yet) opted out, but, two minutes after I confirmed I was experiencing the same thing, it seems to have stopped!?
 
I just opted out and back in: I'm still not seeing the "advanced network error search" page. Seems it could yet be a bit flaky. ;)

Anyway, I'll not worry too much about it! (Opted back out, in case it ever gets reactivated. ;))
 
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