Bah bah phooey -- content cookie and typo exploring

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

What have those id..ts done !! djf


> Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
> Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 08:19:18 -0400
> From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf () sethf com>
> Subject: Re: more on Verisign - content cookie and typo exploring
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines () gainesgroup com>
>
> Gene Gaines wrote:
> >Did you notice that the above indirectly implies you give Verisign
> >authorization to do content filtering for you? Gosh. That is yet
> >another legal notice, at
> >http://sitefinder.verisign.com/preferences.jsp?cookie=1&ru=/lpc
> >
> >If you access that page, Verisign automatically places a cookie and
> >sets "Partial filtering".
>
>         That cookie apparently controls which domains are suggested
> for the typosquatting, and the results of the search engine. It can
> have the three values 'nofilter', 'moderate', 'strict'.
>
>         I've been investigating the squat-suggestion algorithm, seeing
> if there's a notable pattern. Accessing the redirect page directly,
> with specific arguments, means one can even see what would happen if
> they squatted existing domains. For example, for "farber.net", it
> corrects it to (on all three settings):
>
> "www.barber.net,www.farber.com,www.farrer.net,www.karber.net"
>
>         Some domains seem to return results which are not constant,
> i.e. reloading the page changes which squat-suggested domains are
> displayed. I don't think it's an advertising rotation, but the
> behavior is similar to that practice.
>
>         I've written a little program to examine this, available at:
> "Verisign Typosquatter Explorer"
> http://sethf.com/domains/verisquat/
>
> --
> Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf () sethf com  http://sethf.com
> Anticensorware Investigations - http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
> Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/

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