How in the Tech

Put an end to your ISP redirecting DNS errors

By Adam Myers ⋅ January 10, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Firefox

Many Internet Service Providers have begun to hijack failed domain name look-ups. Rather than seeing the typical page cannot be displayed in your browser you are instead redirected to page that contains search results for the website in question. On the surface that actually does sound somewhat handy and useful – perhaps you did key in the address incorrectly and the search results may contain the proper spelling.

However, the search results page doesn’t just include the search results but also it’s typically littered with advertising. It’s not hard to see why the ISP is doing this – it’s all about the money. Internet Providers are in a cut-throat market with razor thin margins so the advertising helps pad the bottom line. There is a hint of sympathy on the users end; if the ISP can’t pay the bills you may not have a bill to pay!

Nevertheless, this behaviour is annoying and you do have a few options. The most logical option, since the ISP DNS servers handle the error redirects, just use another DNS server. A few years ago this may have proved to be a bigger problem but nowadays, with free DNS service from the likes of Google, there just isn’t a reason to tolerate your ISP’s behaviour.

If you are a Firefox user you have a second option via the free extension NoRedirect. Once installed, NoRedirect monitors the address bar for your ISP’s redirect search page, intercepts the load request, and instead shows the expected DNS error. Unfortunately, every ISP has a different search URL and NoRedirect only comes pre-configured with a few of the more popular ISP’s – like Verizon or Rogers. If your ISP isn’t included it is possible to add it but it requires a bit of knowledge of regular expression to parse the URL and look for the search redirect address. Not trivial but neither is it overbearing – it’s simple to see how the pre-configured ISP’s work and you should be able to mirror the changes for your ISP.