VeriSign sued for SiteFinder

Reuters
VeriSign Sued Over Controversial Web Service
Thu September 18, 2003 09:13 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Internet search company on Thursday filed a $100 million antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign Inc., accusing the Web address provider of hijacking misspelled and unassigned Web addresses with a service it launched this week.

I blogged earlier about SiteFinder and everyone agreed it was a "bad thing." VeriSign just got sued for it.

Thanks for the link Peggy!

5 Comments

01. Adriaan - Sep 19, 2003 - 18:32

The service is convenient, though. If you type in "tijsselling.com", the page you get offers the correct "tijsseling.com".

02. Jake of 8bitjoystick.com - Sep 20, 2003 - 02:16

Yay Good lawyers sue bad net company! Yay!

03. ronn - Sep 20, 2003 - 07:38

i hate them, i hate them, i hate!

hope the bastards lose.

04. Peggy Berk - Sep 21, 2003 - 05:10

Its only "convenient" if you happy to have your domain name registered with VeriSign - just tried to "error url" my business site (www.stracom.com) by leaving out the first dot - after about 60 seconds I got a Browser error "could not load the page" messsage - However in those 60 seconds the page the browser was trying to load was:

http://sitefinder.verisign.com/lpc?url=wwwstracom.com&host=wwwstracom.com

So they grabbed me and spit me out?!!! (But didn't spit it back to the error itself!)

Another ingredient inthge VeriSign broth - they announced this week their intent to spin off NSI (the domain registration business) and refocus on the security business from whence they came....

05. Peggy Berk - Sep 21, 2003 - 05:29

More thoughts.....

hmmm... as bits and pieces of VeriSign's plans and implementations emerge, it's beginning to seem to me that this whole deal may just be a canard....

They are only hijacking error urls of sites registered to them (and spitting back those registered elsewhere such as mine - see above comment).... Given their plans to spin off the registry business - and the fact that that business has been in the doldrums for two years as the demand has leveled off and ICAAN has opened it up -- maybe all they are after here is creating a blip in demand for "error url" registrations (from those most likely to register the error urls with them - the ones who maintain their current registrations with VeriSign) and use the revenue bump to get a decent spin off deal (stock-wise/financially).... I've heard worse strategies....

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Versign being sued from middle~path
September 19, 2003 2:25 PM

Verisign are being sued over their .net and .com typosquatting service, SiteFinder. I think they probably deserve it. As I said earlier, I am moving the rest domains away from their control in protest at their protocol and trust-violating SiteFinder.... Read More

Another Reason to Hate V***S*** from { a burst of light }
September 20, 2003 9:01 AM

[ from Joichi Ito, a recent addition to my blogroll and an intriguing thinker ] : Not related to the mac directly, but interesting. Web domain register sued for new service (my title, they don't need anymore free publicity): An Internet search company... Read More

Another Reason to Hate V***S*** from { a burst of light }
September 20, 2003 10:37 AM

Versign being sued from middle~path
November 21, 2003 2:58 PM

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