VeriSign, the curators of the .org and .com domains, just abused the living hell out of their power. As of this morning, any time you try to look up a domain name that doesn’t exist, you get an IP for one of their hosts.
In layman’s terms, this means that if you mistype the domain portion of a URL in your browser — let’s say you type http://www.yankeeessuck.com — it’ll redirect to a VeriSign page. It also means that if you mistype the domain portion of an email address, your mailer will attempt to deliver that email to a VeriSign server. Most likely it’ll just bounce… but there’s no guarantee. Hope you weren’t trying to send mail to a user who happens to exist over there.
The appropriate agency for complaints is ICANN, who oversees domain names. The ICANN email address for complaints is comments@icann.org. The ICANN phone number is (310) 823-9358. The ICANN fax number is (310) 823-8649. The ICANN address is 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330, Marina del Rey, CA 90292.
Grrr.
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