Getting www33.not-found-entry.org? Blame Insight
December 9, 2007
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Let me preface this by saying I'm not an Insight hater. Until this issue I've had absolutely no complaints with my Insight service. That being said a few weeks ago I started noticing that if I mistyped a URL or went to a web address that was down instead of getting the typical, blank "Page Not Found" or "Can't find the server" pages I was instead being directed to www33.not-found-entry.org and a page full of ad links. If I were a Windows user I'd have been really concerned that my machine had been infected with spyware or malware that was hijacking my browser and sending me to a spammy page full of paid links. Being a Mac user though I noted the weird spammy page and made a note to look into it a bit later.
A bit later turned out to be yesterday and when I looked into this issue I found out that, well, Insight has done something that at best can be considered tacky and at worst could be considered a dirty business practice. Several weeks ago Insight rolled out a bug "feature" in the Louisville area (after first rolling it out in Northern Kentucky) that redirects browsers to www33.not-found-entry.org pages whenever the browser should be delivering a server not found message. The www33.not-found-entry.org pages are populated with links that are, in a best case scenario, related to the site you were actually trying to find. All of these links are ads. If you click on these links you're clicking on advertising. Whoever owns the pages running those ads (and I assume but haven't been able to confirm that Insight owns the pages) gets money when you click on those ads. I'm ok with online advertising but I'm not ok with hijacking my browser to show me a page full of ads instead of the generic informational error pages I should be seeing.
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