…Clueless

The last time I reported, Airtel Broadband was redirecting the erroneous traffic to a partnered website (onspeedsearch) where they displayed advertisements.

Just five minutes back, I noticed that erroneous traffic is now being redirected to a page hosted by OpenDNS. Now, I have no clue if Airtel has in some way partnered with OpenDNS to monetize this kind of traffic.

Another theory that is currently running through my brain is that maybe Airtel is redirecting its customers to the OpenDNS servers. This could be because of the recently disclosed vulnerability by Dan Kaminsky which makes all DNS servers prone to attacks. OpenDNS has already stated that it’s servers are patched. What I feel is that Airtel is unable to patch it’s own DNS servers at this point of time so they redirected their customers to OpenDNS. Obviously, there is no way to verify this and obviously this means that OpenDNS is the party that is profiting here.

I am still using the same DNS servers as mentioned in my previous post but this time I am redirected to :

http://guide.opendns.com/?url=badbadurl.in

badbadurl.in is used as an example here.

More discussion about this can be found at IBF.

1. Airtel Broadband redirecting erroneous traffic : Airtel has started redirecting traffic from dead links, non-existant domains and typos to a website of its own where it displays advertisements and a search box surrounded by some categories. The search box is just a dummy form element because if you type in another term it yields no result. Airtel is in partnership with a [...]...
2. Using OpenDNS with Airtel Broadband : These are instructions to use OpenDNS on an Airtel ADSL Connection. I have the Beetel 220BX modem. My domain expired two days back and I forgot to renew it. So, I renewed it and transferred it to GoDaddy. Cost me around 750 bucks. The site might not open still at someplaces because its taking time for [...]...
3. iPhone in India on Aug 22; no subsidies : From what I saw on Zee Business, the iPhone is to be launched in India by Airtel on the 22nd of August. They also telecast a telephonic interview with some president of Airtel who confirmed that there would be no subsidy on the iPhone. That final statement alone is a deal breaker for me. 3G is [...]...
4. iPhone 3G Indian Pricing and Launch Date : One of my friends went over to the Vodafone store in Sector 19, Chandigarh yesterday. He wanted to book the iPhone. They asked him to send a message to a number (Airtel and Vodafone have been playing this stupid booking game since long) which I think is kind of an alert service since they have [...]...
5. India gets iPhone on August 18th : I was surfing the Internet when I came across another piece of news which suggests that iPhone will be launched in India on the 18th of August, 3 days after the Independence Day. Vodafone will be joining the iPhone bash earlier than Airtel. The iPhone wll be available exclusively on Vodafone for the first fifteen days. Source [...]...