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September 23, 2003

Trusting Verisign

Verisign has extended its mighty middle finger to all of us, according to this clear article at SFGate.com:

Internet users who enter unregistered domains because of a misspelling, for example, are redirected to a VeriSign Web site. The page offers possible alternative Web addresses and a search engine that presents links based on how much companies are willing to pay for top billing.

What can you do about it? Beats me. All ideas gratefully accepted.

Posted by D. Weinberger at September 23, 2003 08:58 AM

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Tracked on September 24, 2003 01:29 PM

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Is this new? My browser has been hijacked by what appeared to be a number of unscrupulous vendors when I mistype a URL -- or when a URL I want is no longer in service. At least now I know it is all Verisign.

Posted by: Jack Vinson | September 24, 2003 04:21 PM

On November 4, 2003, VeriSign announced a new "trust enhancing" seal which they built using Macromedia's Flash technology. This new seal makes a connection to their server and displays, in a dynamic text field, the name of the company that bought the certificate. The seal then invites you to click the seal to verify it. This is intended to make people feel more secure about the authenticity of the site they're visiting. But that is a false sense of trust. The purpose of this article is to examine how poorly designed and implemented VeriSign's approach really is.

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Posted by: jokoel | August 12, 2004 09:38 AM

What can you do about it?
Answer. When you come to a versign-hijacked page which is offering you those unwanted pay-per-click ads. Spend a few seconds clicking on the pay-per-click ads and immediately closing down the windows.

If everyone does this, the consequence of this is that any advertiser who finds themselves financially supporting the versign hijack (by paying for these pay-per-click links) will sooner or later realise that they are paying Versign to generate lots of useless visitors. Hence they will cut their ads, hence the Verisign hijack will lose its reason d'etre

Posted by: ronnie porker | July 15, 2007 06:03 PM

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