Martin Cleaver, masterfully.

If Rogers’ questionable policy of redirecting DNS misses wasn’t already enough, this has got to be:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20824864-URL-Manipulation

What Rogers has done is review the URL structure used by this feature when using the Microsoft Live.com search provider. This particular provider takes what is typed into the address bar, when DNS name resolution fails redirects your entry too:

»search.live.com/results.aspx?q=y···-Address

The important aspect of this URL is the src=IE-Address component. This particular component is what Rogers is using to decide if they should steal the request and redirect it to their own service. If you browse to the link […] your request will be stolen and sent to Rogers.

Rogers has made the decision for all Internet Explorer users to prevent [them] from using the Address Bar searching feature for Live.com. [Rogers] are preventing individuals from accessing a public search engine as intended. This is not only something to be reported to the various sites already mentioned, but to Microsoft and Live.com themselves.

My thanks to Hondra of @fmc-law.com for the post and to Colin Smilie of Refresh Partners for verifying the behaviour.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Legal, I.T., Canadian Competitiveness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.