All your Web typos are belong to us

Network administrators are fuming about changes made by domain registrar Verisign to the DNS system yesterday amid concern that the alterations could make it difficult for mail servers to reject mail from invalid domains.

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.

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. This is an abuse of Verisign's role, via acquired company Network Solutions, in running the root DNS servers.

And then there are the practical issues: sysadmins are fuming at the knock-on effects of the changes.