Comments on: More Cablevision Redirect Nonsense

By: rktbrkr

rktbrkr — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:48:08 +0000

I have monmouth cablevision and hadn’t been hijacked but I went to open DNS through my router and it was easy. Haven’t noticed any perfomance improvement, I use Firefox with Safari as my backup.

Cablevision is so obnoxious, I stopped to pay my bill with the same credit card I’ve used dozens of times with them and they demanded photo ID which is not permitted by the Visa contract, I paid online with the CC – no problem!

We need other broadband alternatives to cable and VZ/ATT, there is no real price competition

By: tangent_line

tangent_line — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:43:21 +0000

Hi Barry,
This process varies depending on your laptop OS – but i you are using Windows Vista Home and a wireless laptop connection, to change your DNS provider, click the following links one by one:

start, control panel, network and sharing center, the “view status” link to the right of “wireless network connection”, properties, then highlight and click “internet protocol version 4″, then click the radio button next to “Use the following DNS server addresses” and enter at least one DNS server address.

I use a local university DNS server that is still available to the public, or you can use one of the servers the others mentioned.

By: quoderat

quoderat — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:09:51 +0000

The above encryption, and proxies, can avoid deep packet inspection that some ISPs do. I'm not the paranoid sort, for the most part, so I don't do any of this -- but it is available, and fairly easy to set up.

By: quoderat

quoderat — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:04:34 +0000

“They can track you just fine. Your DNS request still goes over their wire, even if it isn’t answered by their server.”

You’re right, to an extent. However, most ISPs do not do this (YMMV), and it’s a hell of a lot easier to track you if you do bounce off their DNS. If not, it takes some special effort, is a lot more intensive bandwidth- and resource-wise to monitor. Not using their DNS is a small protection, but it is some protection.

If you really want to be protected, encrypted anonymous proxies are the way to go. Telling anyone how to do that, though, is well beyond the scope of this site.

By: The Curmudgeon

The Curmudgeon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:41:56 +0000

“Just goes to show you: Even a slight bit of monopoly power is so easily abused by these clowns.”

And that’s all you need to know about the federal monopoly on the money-printing presses…

By: Darkness

Darkness — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:29:45 +0000

Time Warner does this too, and it completely foobars up the Apple local network services. We installed our own DNS server as a defensive measure, but I expect most households don’t have the wherewithal to do that.

“That way, they also cannot track what sites you visit because they then know nothing about them — another advantage. ”

They can track you just fine. Your DNS request still goes over their wire, even if it isn’t answered by their server.

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:26:42 +0000

Also, if you’re really paranoid about any service caching your DNS lookups, you _could_ run a DNS server on Mac OS X.. The standard (BIND 9) will compile and run if you install the OS X Developer Tools (from the install DVD).. At that point, you’d be querying root servers directly, and even though root server owners/registrars could play games, that’s about as “pure” a connection as you can get.

By: Bob the unemployed

Bob the unemployed — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:46:06 +0000

Barry, do you clear cookies on the PC? Cablevision may store the opt-out status in a cookie.

By: How the Common Man Sees It

How the Common Man Sees It — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:58:15 +0000

the smarty value of some of the pants on this site is great Barry

By: chalimac

chalimac — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:40:58 +0000

This might fix the Firefox redirect:

“Type about:config in the address bar and press enter. If you are on Firefox 3, click “I’ll be careful, I promise!”. Now type keyword.url in the Filter field and set the value as:

http://www.google.com/search?q=

If you want Firefox to do a “I am Feeling Lucky” style Google search, use this value for keyword.URL:

http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

Also make sure that the value of keyword.enabled is set to TRUE. That’s it – now any query you type in the Firefox Address bar will go to Google”