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STOP INTERCEPTING WEB REQUESTS!
This post is HERE because Cox has made it far to difficult to contact them over the Internet. Where is your support form?
I am a web developer of 17 years by trade. Not a designer or casual web publisher, I know how this stuff works. PLEASE STOP interferring with our web requests!
It's bad enough that when an invalid domain is typed in you feed us your own search response instead of letting the browser respond with a normal 404.
Or pipe our email through your proxy servers causing all sorts of technical resolution issues.I can't even report spam to Spamcop any more thanks to your screwed up way of relaying mail through your servers.
Today I attempted to follow a link that uses a URL shortening service. Apparently, Cox has no clue what that is, here, let me show you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening
So today I attempted to access a link from a **web page** using the ow.ly shortening service which admittedly also uses the link for tracking, and I get THIS
"Dear Valued Cox Customer,
You have been taken to this page because you followed a link in a fraudulent email. This email was not from Cox Communications.
Occasionally, Cox customers receive emails masquerading as Cox Communications and requesting account information. Usually they urgently ask for you to update your billing information, and request credit card and other personal or account information.
Please understand that Cox will never request our customers' personal financial or account information via email.
Email of this type is called "phishing." These emails are illegal attempts to collect confidential information from internet users. When detected, Cox takes immediate action to insure that access to these sites is first blocked from the Cox network, and then works with hosting ISP's to terminate the accounts.
For more information in combating online fraud or to file a complaint, visit http://onguardonline.gov .
Regards,
Cox Communications
Your Friend in the Digital Age"
It's not even an email link! It is an ordinary URL-shortened link. I can't even investigate it because you've blocked all access to ow.ly!
WHAT IS NEXT? Are you going to block requests because some corporate head doesn't like this service or that? Disallow our browsing to follow political or social agendas you support?
If we are "valued customers" then stop interferring with our Internet!
So some newbie gets a virus, this is how we learn. We don't need to be protected or guided, we need to GET THE SERVICE WE PAY FOR without your intervention.
I'm nowhere near done. You will receive a call from me today. This s**t needs to STOP.
ChrisL
Former Moderator
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chorizo
New Contributor
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Why are you using Cox's DNS servers? (I'm assuming you are, because ow.ly works for me - just tried it). I don't think this is the more sophisticated ISP trick of rerouting NXDOMAIN responses from a non-Cox DNS that you have specified in your router settings or TCP/IP settings on your device.
To prevent 404 redirects from taking you to spam, tell your router to NOT use the DNS servers that your ISP provides. OpenDNS and Google are the most popular options, but research it for your area. They MIGHT even be way faster (in my experience Cox's DNS servers were plenty fast, but I refuse to use them because of the intrusiveness of redirects). Googles are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 which are nice to remember whenever suspect ISP monkey business at home or elsewhere.
The nastier ISP trick is intercepting the "non-existent domain" response your selected DNS server sends back to you after you type a bad URL. They are literally reading a packet sent to you and then using the information in it to reroute you to a page that makes them money instead of the 404 page. To be clear, Cox does not do this, at least not in my area. To test if your ISP is doing this, after you have already set up alternate DNS servers and confirmed they work, go to a terminal/command line and type 'ping asdfblahaadkadafeaa.com' (any nonexistent domain will suffice). You SHOULD get no responses to your pings, because the domain is fake. If you get a ping response from a 100% confirmed nonexisting domain, then your ISP intercepted and redirected you. The only way around this is a router capable of DNSmasq, and as far as I know only routers that can run dd-wrt or tomato can do this.
I agree that it is obnoxious that all major ISP's redirect your "bad" (mistyped) internet traffic to advertising sites, but that is par for the course now. All the major ones do it, because they own the copper and, for now, copper is the only game in town. But THIS YEAR over the air broadband on the old TV spectrum is starting to roll out. In a few years, maybe as few as 5(?), smaller companies will be able to compete with the regional monopoly ISP's. No one can compete now because of the infrastructure costs. I don't begrudge the monopoly ISP's for making as much money as they can right now, because they are dying and they know it. They (or their corporate ancestors) paid to have that copper put in the ground, and that was a mind-bogglingly huge capital investment they need to get return on. But unless the FCC prevents the spectrums from being open to competition (which is uncertain, given that the FCC is captured by the communications industry), the copper-based monopolies will go bye bye. So fast you'll be shocked.
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