Getting www33.not-found-entry.org? Blame Insight
December 9, 2007 | | Comments (3)

safari.pngLet 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.

This unfortunate browser behavior is, luckily, easy enough to fix. It just involves changing some DNS settings. Seriously, it's not that hard but I'll forgive you if you don't want to muck around with your DNS settings.

General Instructions for Mac users
Go to System Preferences>Network
Choose Configure and select the TCP/IP tab.
In the DNS Servers box enter:
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2

Click Apply Now

*Note that those aren't the only DNS options but they are the ones I'm using and should work fine for you but feel free to do some research about DNS options.

General Instructions for Windows Users
Go to Control Panel>Network Connections and select your local network.
Click Properties, then select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
Click Properties.
Select "Use the following DNS server addresses" and enter the desired DNS servers in the spaces. The two I'm using are 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2.


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3 Comments

slippytoad said:

I fixed this by putting the following entry in my hosts file:

127.0.0.1 www33.not-found-entry.org

make sure there's a tab character between those.

For Windows XP or Vista users, it's located in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Use notepad to open it, and make sure after you save it you haven't added a .txt to it. Takes effect immediately.

February 21, 2008 1:37 PM
Michael said:

Thank you so much for this! I have been annoyed for a while now if I'm in Safari and type "apple" without the .com on the end that it would redirect me to that 33.not-found....

So thanks for this! And by the way... its a little different if you are running Leopard (10.5) but basically still the same.

Thanks!

February 21, 2008 4:50 PM
michelle said:

ubuntu users: system>administration>network, DNS tab: add 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 to "search domains"

February 29, 2008 9:57 PM

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