US ISP Comcast,
which has annoyed its customers by sending them to advertising pages when
they mistype a web address, has been found to be hijacking punters computers
to make sure it works.
For ages customers have been moaning that they end up
with Comcast's advertising if they make a mistake because its DNS server
sends the traffic to its own server.
An anonymous
blogger claims that the situation is a lot worse because the ISP is messing with
users port 53, possibly in collusion with Earthlink. He writes that what
is happening is that any UDP traffic bound for port 53 on any server is
redirected to its own server. So if you get under the bonnet of your
computer and wire it so that it uses a different DNS server you will still
end up in Comcast's clutches.
The anonymous blogger has tested the network
traffic and shown his proof online. While there is probably nothing illegal
in what Comcast is up too, it does indicate that it thinks it has the right
to control your traffic the way it likes.
There are a lot of geeks who
are not going to like that.