Domain Helper service: Here to help you

I have tried repeatedly to remove this invasive and unwanted service. I have followed all directions, spent over an hour on the phone (and was told both that this service did not exist and then that it was due to my non-supported wireless router). I also have written in before and been assured it will be removed from my account without any luck. This is by far one of the most obnoxious invasions and takeovers of my computer I have ever seen. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REMOVE IT FROM MY ACCOUNT. I AM BEGGING YOU TO JUST TURN OFF THE OPTION ON MY ACCOUNT AND GET RID OF IT.

The opt-out doesn't work. I opted out and the domain-helper (with all of its obtrusive ads) still comes to my "rescue".

Wow. My second day with Comcast and I already regret it.

This "service" does not follow DNS standards, instead Comcast is hijacking my browser to try to turn a few bucks.

This should be opt-in only since it is a change from expected behvior. I was surprised by it and did a little searching and finally found your opt-out process. Unfortunately, there is nothing in "my Devices" and nothing to troubleshoot this issue. I did a chat with your agents and she told me there was an error when she tried to turn it off. Ummm... thanks??? so now what?

I've tried sending an email but if I don't get this fixed in a few days, I'll be leaving comcast ASAP. Certainly won't use their DNS.

I signed up for you to use standar protocol to route my traffic and let me do what I want. I did not sign up for you to monkey around, ignore DNS protocols, and serve me crappy ugly error pages stuffed with ads. Do what I pay you for, and then leave me alone. So far I've spent an hour on this today. I guess any speed I picked up over DSL has just been a wash.

I also cannot opt out. Spent an hour on the phone yesterday with Comcast who claimed that no such thing existed even though it is right on my screen. I was told it was because I had an unsupported (i.e. no comcast) wireless router.

I am using Mac Safari and click the diable error service with no response. I follow instructions to go into my account and the user and settings tab. Under this area NO option to disable the service exists. All that is needed is for Comcast to set my account properly.

It was last left with the phone technician yesterday that he would write a note about my complaint. Some help.

Another thing I wanted to ad is I don't care if other ISPs offer this service I still don't want it and I don't want to have to log into anything to get rid of it. Stop using the "Well everybody else is doing it." excuse.

WOW, so I'm VPNed into my company's network, and from within Microsoft Word 2007, I browse to our SharePoint portal via unc path: \\portal\some\folder\containing\my\docs

All seems well.

Then I double click the Word Doc I want. What loads is a Word-parsed HTML file from friendly comcast DNS service "Domain Helper" -- guess I need to opt out... This is NOT what Comcast has said (that it would not "hijack" or "override" VALID DNS QUERIES), but that it would only respond to clear failures. This is ridulous. Totally destroying my ability to use my office VPN and sharepoint.

This service is absolutely terrible and has given me every reason to drop Comcast. If you think this service is a winner -- let people opt in; as it is, this absolutely needless "service" is actively working against me and my Google-powered Firefox address bar. Even worse, when I finally noticed the Disable link I was routed through no fewer than five different Comcast sites -- each asking for credentials -- all to finally arrive at a dashboard that I was unable to log into.

Thanks for a terrible "service".

I set my "helper" status to "off" last weekend and yet I still get the service. I very much agree with the general tone on this blog that this "service" SUCKS! I while I will NEVER EVER click on one of the links provided by this "service," my dissatisfaction with my ISP will grow every time I see it.

"I can assure you that all opt-out requests will be honored." - Scotty McNulty

That's a load of crap, you've already "lost" my opt out request. Or is that the plan, to make everyone jump through hoops to opt out every few weeks so that eventually they'll give up and just deal with it?

This service will be the straw that broke the camels back. Thanks to the DNS redirecting (and the highly nonintuitive method of disabling it), I'm switching to another service provider following the end of my contract.

I completely agree. Absolutely ASTOUNDING that Comcast would for people to OPT OUT of hijacking your internet. I had this same problem tonight. One big absolute BOOOOOO to Comcast for pulling this trick.

What a staggeringly bad idea. Poorly implemented, too; I received no advance notice of the rollout.

You have broken my work mail, etc.

I will begin my search for a new provider today.

You can only turn this "feature" or should I saw money maker for Comcast in IE on Winodws. Safari and Firefox on a MAC will not allow you to see the disable button in the pop-up window.

I talked to comcast tech support and he didn't know what I was taking about LOL!

Here is a trick I use:

If you are using FireFox go and get the addon called NoRedirect then enable the addon go to tools and then NoRedirect. Then click on Add and add http://search3.comcast.com or the one you want to block. I have DNS Error checked on mine.

For some reason I disabled the domain helper crap and I would still get that page. After I set up that addon I dont see that comcast crap anymore!!!

You hope customers find this service to be helpful? You have “best practices” for DNS hijacking? What a joke. This isn’t helpful, the only “best practice” is to follow the DNS spec, and your saccharine responses to complaints are insulting. I’ve just gone through three or four rounds with your “opt-out” link, to no avail. Funny that the part of this system that serves ads seems to work fine.

I’ve already cancelled my television service with Comcast because I just can’t stomach giving you any more money than is absolutely necessary. Internet utilities should be regulated as heavily as water, gas, and electricity. If you keep this kind of thing up, you will be.

This is simply unacceptable. After taking my money in exchange for a promise to provide a service - Internet Access - comcast changes that service in a way that fundamentally breaks a fundamental function of the service - returning a legitimate error when a DNS lookup fails. Many pieces of software that access the internet depend on this fundamental and basic function of internet access. The result is that this action by comcast, an action that violates the RFC standard for DNS (NXDOMAIN) responses, essentially renders many pieces of software that their customers depend on ineffective. This action was taken by comcast after many customers, AND suppliers of the affected software, invested much of their time and resources into what is ultimately a reasonable dependence on this fundamental function of internet access.

This action by comcast has caused real, measurable damage to customers and software suppliers.

This Domain Helper service breaks my work VPN domain server list and completely blocks me from accessing all my work websites. Even though I opted out of this service a few days ago, it keeps throwing me back to static IP address 208.68.139.38 and messes with my work. I was totally unaware of this nonsense until things started breaking a month back and had to call my work help desk to get to know about this issue. Comcast never alerted me about this and it is really rude that they stuck this in my account with default settings set to ON.

I hate this service. I use Comcast for internet and cable, not to have my browser hijacked. It took me hours of trying to figure out what was wrong with my browser before I found out this was a Comcast "service" and not some kind of spyware.

After opting out of this hijacking service about a month ago, Comcast decided to opt me back in to this "Yahoo Search" powered service. On top of that, the results returned are WORTHLESS!

I searched for "comcast hijacked my dns" only to be greeted with "Sorry, we can't find "comcast hijacked my dns"." Yahoo search results have plenty.. guess comcast just doesn't want the truth out ... hmm.. sounds like .. uh... chairman Mao.

What an outrageous and intrusive power grab. Thanks, Comcast, for delivering more ads to my screen. Now I have to create a Comcast email address and user account just to opt out of this stupid bug? Ridiculous. Easier to assign a new DNS to my account.

Wow Comcast. This is totally crap, even for your standards. We PAY for your service and then you try to get ad revenue? I demand a price reduction then.

I'm very disappointed. For years we've stuck with Comcast even though they're more expensive, even as the price got higher and higher for our services. And now you're hijacking my browser which I choose of my own free will, and pretend like you're helping me? You provide me a service, which is broadband internet. Your permission to enter my home stops where the cable meets my modem. Stay off my monitor please.

This helper service totally stinks! Very Lame. Very Disappointing.

This is functionality that browsers should handle. Users see what they type, browsers auto-complete and show history drop-downs. Google Chrome especially does this well. Once submitted, the dns name should be locked in. There are too many complications arising from this and it's handled too well client-side. Remove the service, or at least default to opt-out.

She might also be referring to the CAPTCHA when you try to log in or get a new password, which was hard for me to read.

This breaks a basic behavior of Firefox. When I go to the location bar and type "USPS", instead of being redirected to the post office homepage (or, if the top result isn't a clear winner, a Google search), I get hijacked by Comcast. Firefox has a variety of things it does when the domain does not exist, and you're breaking that.

I have no idea what my Comcast email is, and nothing I'm trying works. I'm just gonna change the DNS servers I'm using and stop telling people I'm happy with Comcast. If you haven't figured out that you're breaking something useful here, that's fine. Just don't expect me to put off switching to Verizon FiOS any longer.

Shame on you, Comcast.

a) I can't make the opt-out page work under Safari. I get a pretty comcast progress banner that never goes away.

b) This is not a helpful service. It actively interferes with the way the internet is supposed to work: As a user, I would like to be told as as user that a website does not exist. I don't want to be redirected to a list of supposedly helpful sites.

Comcast should stop meddling with the service I actually pay them for and focus their revenue efforts on legitimate services such as the very excellent fancast.com.

'The other guy does it too and he does it worse' is not an excuse outside of a 1st grade classroom. And those are the only responses from Comcast I've seen to the comments here. If you cannot truly defend your practice on its own merits, or be honest that it is about money and not about providing some supposed service to customers who didn't even know they needed it then perhaps you should re-examine your practice.

If your Domain Helper were locally installed on my machine, it would be spyware. And quite frankly the Yahoo-powered ad-based search that popped up wouldn't provide the proper address in its search results when the only error was that it ended with ".orgz".

I am incredibly unhappy with my Comcast service as a result of this.

Shameful stuff Comcast. DishTv, here I come.

Congratulations, Comcast, you just earned a fifth of a cent with your disgusting and disrepsectful "helper" here. Particularly cute is how you require me to submit my social security number to you

I can guarantee the conversation I just had with your tech online, (comcastsupport.com) and the follow-up ones I'm going to need to have, to cancel this, are more expensive than that.

Snap out of the delusion that it's just that all customers are whiny, and wake up to the fact that it is your own disgusting, maximally exploitative behavior that they are reacting to. No commercial, no "conversation" with your users, can fix that. Why, exactly, are you not heavily regulated by the state Public Service and Public Utilities Commissions?

i opted out of this service FIVE days ago yet it still has not been disabled. it is absolutely outrageous that this unwanted service has been forced upon me, and it is unconscionable you won't even allow me to opt out!

Just got hijacked by this so called 'Helper' for the first time today and am extremely disappointed in Comcast. The fact that I have to do any work to opt out of a service I never asked for nor requested is ridiculous. And, I am sorry, but up to 2 days (which is the notice I just got) to process the request is unacceptable and not "quick." If I had any other choice, I would be leaving Comcast.

This is just a slimy way to screw up the internet and make money foisting advertisements on people by directing them to another useless web page. Euphemisms such as 'domain helper' are blatant lies for a marketing grab with no concern for the customer.

I do not need any of these stupid portals or 'exciting services' from Comcast that they spam my email accounts about every month. Now they figured out another way to get you to look at their web pages. As far as real internet services that an ISP should be providing, Comcast took away usenet, and then magically deleted everything that was on my personal web page with no explanation. Thank god FTP still works for uploading to the web pages, the 'personal web page designer' is as much a useless hell as the whole Comcast website that is designed to run slow, lockup web browsers, and now since I paid my last bill was redesigned with so much more floating popup crap that now the browser can't even save the password. Well now it works on Firefox which it didn't for two years.

Returning false information for DNS has now broken the access to computers inside my own house. I do not need the URL meant for a local server now sent to advertisers as keywords (wonder if the advertisers get passwords from the URL too?!? Luckily everything goes out through my own gateway with a DNS server of it's own so I was able to specify a non-Comcast DNS server (and surprise, faster). Opt-out is not an answer, turn this off now! SHAME!

Because of Comcast's Domain Hijacker, we will be opting out of Comcast's high-speed Internet at our first opportunity. This is a sleazy business practice.

This truly is buillsh*t. Pushing this "service" down our throats was bad enough, but apparently the opt-out is ignored. I actually believed the "We completed the work" email - until I mistyped an URL (well past the period that DHCP would have renewed, but I had forced it) and landed at the DHS screen. Silly me for trusting Comcast and not trying ti see if I had actually been opted out.

You are a horrible company, Comcast, and your mostly captive audience with no alternatives in their area are why you do not lose more customers.

Baloney, I've been waiting WEEKS now, after OPTING OUT Three times. It seems the comcrap geniuses can't seem to figure out how to actually opt you out. Perhaps they're still reading their scripts that tell them to "clear your cookies"

I canceled my service over this, and encourage others to do the same as this change affirms that Comcast is largely unwilling to adhere to basic internet standards. I also recommend contacting Rick Germano[1] to voice your concerns, and also congressional representatives and/or the FCC. I look forward to an open internet unhindered by corporate meddling.

[1] http://www.comcast.com/customers/feedback/default.cspx

GREAT. If I don't remember to OPT OUT tonight, I may have to take the rest of the week off of work. I work from home several days (and nights) a week, and depend on my internet service to get me VPN'd to work.

Thank you Comcastic / craptastic.

Maybe if your company spent more than five minutes meeting on ways to increase revenue in what, in many regions, is an already monopolized market, you could have come up with something original and valuable to provide customers. However, your company has decided to take advantage of a majority of users that are clueless to your greed. (Please censor me again for calling your company what it is - greedy.) It's DNS hijacking. It's unsolicited (opt-out?? give me a break.) and it's spam. How about make all the noobs, who are oblivious to any change, OPT-IN.

Yeah, yeah. I can change my DNS servers. Yeah, yeah. I can go through your elegant opt-out system. Point is that I shouldn't have to. Point is that I have already have a really good system for finding out whether or not a URL resolves. Firefox has been handling that just fine for me. And guess what? It's ad-free. If I wanted to pay $50/month to be advertised to even more I'd... well, I'd opt-in.

Comcast isn't the first company to pull this and they most certainly won't be the last. But give me a break. Quit blowing smoke up our collective butts and telling us you know what's good for us and how much of a help it will be.

I am here to add my voice to the tally of those who oppose this service.

So other than having someone tell us that the domain helper BS is easy to opt out of, is anyone reading this or taking the customers into consideration? Oh wait we a just sheep that do whatever our ISP tells us and continue to pay while they pull in more revenue from ads and partnerships.... we should be ashamed as much as comcast. Maybe it will all get better when someone wises up and does a class-action against the providers for breaking the internet (yes this is typosquating and yes this is illegal but comcast and others seem to be able to call it something else but w/e).

I'm in Atlanta and have just experienced this "domain helper" crap. All I want AND need from you is an internet connection that is reliable. STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY INTERNET EXPERIENCE.

This just showed up for me today. I'm very, very unhappy with the change. I opted out, of course, but I should not have HAD to opt-out. I want my browser to take over when I mistype a URL - Firefox helpfully uses Google for it. I do not want to give you more Ad revenue from Yahoo.

I'm very disappointed at this violation of my trust in your company. You've broken core functions of the internet for increased ad revenue. While I know my MAC address, many of your customers won't. It's a poor way to service your customers.

Comcast should not be in business of hijacking DNS to begin with. Not to mention the manner in which this "service" is forced on Comcast customers. If Comcast believes that the opt-out process is that simple it should have given the customers the opportunity to opt-in.

alot of Comcast customers have no other recourse than to endure whatever Comcast deems appropriate for their business, as the only service provider in many smaller communities. Of course canceling service is a remedy, but Verizon DSL might as well be NetZero dial-up. I've opted out, but the frustration is always present. No anger, just reality. OpenDNS.

I'm having trouble finding a single positive review here, Comcast. So will you listen to your *customers* and turn this immoral, illegal service off permanently? OF COURSE NOT! You are bad.