Solved DNS problem: ISP is blocking my attempts to connect to Wikipedia

[pam4water]

Last edited Fri Jul 18, 2014, 12:01 AM - Edit history (2)

When I search for wikipedia I get redirect to:

http://autosearch.zoominternet.net/search/?q=http%3A//www.wikipedia.org/&r=&t=0

The page has a list of Wikipedia links but they all circle back to that page.

It happens if, I use yahoo or google.

It has the logo of my ISP in the corner of the page Armstrong. They used to be local but got bought out a while ago. I for get who by. I'm in south west Pennsylvania. Anyone else heard of this or having this problem?

Edit1:
I also get that page when I type a non-sense URL into the address bar. I use a kludge to close firefox sometimes. I have greasemonkey script set to close the browser, if I got a specific unused URL -- like 4ert7eiaer.net. I tested the URL to make sure, it was not used I get that same page if I try to go to that URL. I didn't get the regular address not found error message random URL, so I has to be at the ISP level that the interception is happening.

Edit2:
Looks like my ISP redirected me in a loop instead of putting up a the error page for bad DNS look up.
Thanks for the help.

[NYC_SKP]

1. kick for more input nt

[TygrBright]

2. Sounds like you gotta PUP or some other malware.

Start by running MalwareBytes and Spybot, as well as your regular AV program.

Good luck.

trepidatiously,
Bright

[pam4water]

3. It's stopped now. I would have guess hijack too,

Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2014, 07:37 AM - Edit history (1)

except it goes to the ISP page not your normal kind of hijack site, so I don't think it's a hack of the usual sort.

[steve2470]

4. what DNS server are you using ?

If you use OpenDNS or Google DNS, etc you probably won't run into this problem. You can change your DNS server in your router.

[bananas]

5. DNS redirection is actually a very common problem - you can opt-out, or change your dns servers.

A lot of isp's do this - if a dns lookup fails, instead of returning an error code as they're supposed to, they redirect you to a "helpful" search page with sponsored links. It's a violation of standards, but a lot of isp's do it anyway. Where I am, we have Time Warner Cable, which gives a choice of Road Runner or Earthlink for ISP - and both Road Runner and Earthlink do this dns redirection.

The reason the lookup for wikipedia failed is because sometimes servers are inaccessible - either a routing problem, or the server crashes, or any of a number of reasons. So when your isp's dns server couldn't contact the authoritative servers, instead of returning an error code to your browser, it redirected your browser to the "helpful" search guide:

http://armstrongonewire.com/support/internet/articles/search-guide.aspx

Search Guide

Search Guide is a feature that makes finding a website easier and more convenient. It is designed to provide helpful results when a search term is entered into the browser address bar or a website error is detected. Armstrong does not track internet activity through this tool. Search Guide simply redirects queries to a useful search results page instead of a cryptic error message page or browser-defined page. Customers wishing to opt out of the Search Guide feature may do so at any time by visiting the preferences page at http://autosearch.zoominternet.net/prefs.php.

So there are the instructions for opting out of dns redirection.

Or, you can use public dns servers like opendns or google's, you night be able to change them in your router, or you can change them on your computers. I don't have a link handy for that.

OpenDNS used to do it's own dns redirection, but they stopped recently:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/OpenDNS-Finally-Pulls-Redirection-Ads-129337

OpenDNS Finally Pulls Redirection Ads
by Karl Bode 08:41AM Friday Jun 13 2014

In a blog post, OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch notes that the company will no longer be embedding ads in their redirection page (which pops up when you misstype or enter a nonexistent URL). One reason was the ads didn't gel with security (Comcast had to shut down their own redirection ads years ago because they don't play nice with DNSSEC upgrades).

The other is Google Chrome. "We knew, and know, the (Chrome) omnibox provides the superior user experience: it was built into the browser as code, and had more smarts than using DNS alone allowed, providing a better user experience," said Ulevitch. "For a while, we tried to improve our experience, but it was a losing battle." It's worth noting the company also opened new data centers in Vancouver and Toronto.

Level3 has public dns servers, but they started doing dns redirection last year:

https://vpsboard.com/topic/2542-level3-public-dns-servers-search-engine-redirect/

Level3 Public DNS Servers - Search Engine Redirect
nunim Posted 09 November 2013 - 05:58 AM

Does anyone use Level3's public DNS?
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2

I've been using them forever because they were always better then ISP default servers. I know a lot of people are using Google's DNS now but I've found Level3 had a better latency in most cases, and since I've been using them for years, I stuck with it.

However, tonight something odd happened that I never noticed before... Failed dns lookups, i.e. invalid domain or domain doesn't exist.. Now redirects me to searchguide.level3.com instead of simply failing. Has anyone else noticed this??!? I do a lot of website testing during the day and I've never seen this redirect before so it has to have been a fairly recent change.

I guess I may have to start using Google's DNS, since they have all my information anyhow... Google DNS doesn't do redirect on failure do they? I want failure messages on failure! Is that too much to ask?

<snip>

drmike Posted 10 November 2013 - 08:31 PM

I started a thread when this started. It's a list of open public DNS resolvers.

http://vpsboard.com/topic/2544-free-public-dns-resolver-list-public-dns-servers/

[Earth Bound Misfit]

6. Great post, TY! eom

[pam4water]

7. I'm on the default DNS for my ISP. I think I was using google's DNS for a while, but my harddrive

died recently and I did a clean install of vista. (Yes, Vista ) I can probably remember how to switch DNS and move over to the OpenDNS. Now that google is out of my good graces. Years ago there was a site I love that would fall off the DNS for weeks at a time, but I got the gateway error back then instead of directed in circles XD

Thanks so much for the info.