04Aug2009
Domain Helper National Rollout Begins
In July we announced the beginning of a trial for Domain Helper, which provides suggestions and links, based on mistyped web addresses (see the original posting on this service). Based on the success of the market trial we have now decided to roll out the service to the rest of our customers. Customers will receive an email explaining the service and how it works. If customers do not wish to use this service, they can use our easy to use opt-out located here: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net and we'll be making the opt-out process easier in the future.
To find out how Domain Helper works, please click here.
We hope that customers find this service helpful and look forward to any feedback you might have.
Enter Comments
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Comments (88)
Ahmed, first off we aren't testing tiered Internet access in any markets. You might be confusing us with a different company there.
Secondly, most of the opt-out complaints here were expressed when we were using our old method of opting out. The new method (logging into Customer Central and toggling a switch) is very easy to do.
This 'service' just kicked in for our household. It is atrocious to say that this adds any sort of value to the consumer. Firefox already has a brilliant feature whereby you are able to type part of a URL and it will redirect you to the website you intended, without any feedback from the user. For example, typing "crossword" in the address bar and hitting enter takes you to the USA Today online crossword page, and typing "face" will take you to Facebook.com. Firefox accomplishes this by running a background Google search and redirecting you to the most relevant hit (note: this feature is only activated when you don't type a domain like .org or .com, so it is only used when you want it to be).
The Domain 'Helper' service breaks this brilliant feature, so now typing what would have taken you to your favorite pages now sends you to a page where Comcast can serve you some ads and get a kickback for choosing Yahoo as their search partner. Don't try to spin this as a positive--this is money grubbing at its worst. I urge all Firefox users to install the NoRedirect extension (http://code.kliu.org/noredirect/) and add http://search3.comcast.com/ to the blocklist (be sure to check the button in the "DNS Error" column). It's a shame that this is necessary for two reasons:
1. This is clearly a case where opt-in is more desirable over opt-out.
2. The means they provide TO opt-out are flawed, as made obvious by the various complaints here in the comments.
Shame on you, Comcast. It is not hard to see how this will wreak havoc on not only simple conveniences like Firefox's redirector, but also on more serious aspects of internet use such as POP or IMAP email accounts or any kind of VPN functionality.
Are you TRYING to break the internet? Add this to the greedy tiered internet access you are testing out in some markets and it certainly seems that way.
None of what you are *now* saying was clear from the Advisory on the Domain Helper opt-out page.
The issue I was referring to was that in order to opt-out of Domain Helper Service, the only *readily* available means was through a primary login via the comcast.net website.
Quoting from the page itself: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
"If you are using a secondary account, you will not be able to view preferences for Domain Helper.
If you require assistance with opting out in Comcast customerCentral, please click here."
Which leads back to a comcast.net login page.
That opt-out offers no explanation of simply changing the DNS settings on a router. Rather, it points back to a login screen, and some instructions that the MAC address of the comcast modem would be needed etc, etc.
Maybe you can reword that page to include what you are telling us now?
We announced that we were unifying our Terms of Service on Oct. 6th three months ago:
http://blog.comcast.com/2009/09/unified-terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy-for-comcast-websites.html
Domain Helper has nothing to do with it. However, if you want to opt-out without logging into Comcast.net you can always configure your computers to use one of our non-Domain Helper enabled DNS servers manually.
The list is available here: http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses2.php
Comcast has changed the terms of service and are attempting to force a new agreement upon users.
If you have an older login username (what Comcast now calls a secondary login), you can't really opt-out of the service via that link posted above.
You are required to sign into your account as a Comcast.net user. If you try logging with your non-comcast.net account login that previously worked, you are re-routed to a new login and terms of agreement. That page explicitly states that you can only access your "User settings" with a primary (ie, comcast.net) acct login.
You are then asked to 'update' your login, accept their new terms of agreement and literally "Delete" your current username.
That is not Opt-Out of a service.
It is forcing a service upon users, then 'coercing' them to join comcast.net, agree to a whole new set of terms, and delete the username/account (and those terms of service) that the Domain Helper was applied to in the first place.
I don't know how you can call that "opt-out" if it's not an option under my current login--the same account in which you added the Domain 'Helper'.
i hate this and i cannot turn it off through my accounts page for your site. please opt me out of this or i will cancel my service with you.
Just wanted to say thanks, Comcast. This "service" has given me the perfect excuse to try out Google's new DNS service (http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-google-public-dns-new-dns.html). Sure, I could opt out of your money-grab. But why would I when I could never have to deal with your antics in this arena again?
By the way, don't think I'm doing anything but biding my time until I move to an area with some competition. You people are a shining example of why monopolies are bad for consumers.
This service is terrible... opt-out! It should be an opt-in program, thanks Comcast for making a decision about a service I would never want. So glad I finally got around to finding the opt-out website and information
This is an absolutely horrible service. And it is a time consuming, error prone, and cumbersome opt-out process for something I do not want, am not paying for, and DID NOT OPT-IN to.
Please stop. You don't have the best reputation as a service company, and this does not help AT ALL.
I have extremely disliked this service ever since the decision has been "made for me." I immediately followed the opt-out instructions some time ago (when the process involved email). Recently I noticed that I had somehow been "opted-in" for domain helper, through no will of my own (unacceptable, anyone?). I have now followed the instructions as per https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/. Domain Helper is CLEARLY DISABLED on my user settings, and yet when browsing Domain Helper STILL SHOWS UP. Why not actually respect my wish to "opt-out" of a service that I should have been asked about in the first place?
Right. Just recently noticed that my non-existant domain traffic got redirected by comcast. Normally, I'd be cool with such features if they were opt in, but I generally don't use them on my network. That being said, there may be some users who would wish to utilize such a feature. Hence I made the judgement call to use the alternate DNS servers at the router level and configure it with the regular DNS servers on a machine-by-machine basis, after having consulted with my users.
I will note that I did get a chance to toy around with it some and it did not, out of the box, provide the extensive level of configuration that other alternate DNS servers provide. That being said, since I currently use OpenDNS as a means of content filtering for younger users, I could see me setting this up on other machines to provide bad URL redirects without the content filters.
I still would have preferred if it was an opt-in service though. =)
I would like to be opted out of the new DNS service.
I've read through the posts, however none of this is as easy as you make it out to be. I support several hundred end users who connect back to office using a Cisco VPN client. What Comcast needs to understand is that while the average home user may not care about the helper, anyone who works from home is going to be adversely affected by this hijack. Can one of you (you being Comcast posters) please provide me with instructions I can send to my end users (keep in mind that these are definitely not technical people) to opt-out? (and no, https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/ is broken and the link to http://dns.comcast.net has no clear instructions for a typical end user to follow)
Hi - This is Kate Noel posting for Chris Griffiths. We want again mention that there are opt-out methods at http://dns.comcast.net that people should feel free to use. Thanks.
This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. I will be switching to DSL right away.
Thanks for breaking access to my exchange service on VPN Comcast. I'm opting OUT of this program that should have been opt IN in the first place.
You guys are breaking the internet. I have worked tech support at a competing ISP and I can't believe your higher-ups would an opt-out DNS hijacking is okay. It broke our VPN in such a weird way that it took hours to figure out where the problem was (though this was probably because I didn't even consider that the ISP had started intentionally giving bunk DNS results).
I'm already spread thin as the IT guy at a small organization, and you wasted hours of my productivity trying to figure out why our staff could not reach our mail servers over VPN. Then your support department denied they were messing with DNS, escalated me to the next support tier(only after threatening multiple cancellations) who was equally clueless no matter how many times I described the problem. They claim to have escalated again, but never called me back.
After finding the DNS removal link on my own, I advised our staff to try it, and so far it hasn't worked. I am recommending that everyone in my organization leave Comcast for an ISP that respects internet standards.
You (comcast) are wrong for selling out your customers for Ad revenue. You could have made it opt-in and you could have made the opt-out process much easier. Bye bye.
I'm posting this because I work in IT for a large real estate conglomerate and we've found this new
feature tends to interfere with Microsoft VPN (which we use) for employees working from home or
anywhere a high speed internet connection is found. The opting out process tends to take more
time than one would suppose so I thought I'd post this for the benefit of your help desk staff who
might or might not be experiencing calls on this issue. Opting out has taken several hours in the
cases I've seen. Once this opting out has occurred VPN connectivity resumes. I suspect you might
also see this for Cisco VPN as well although we are not running this in house to test. FYI. Thanks.
Hey Bill,
I'll send you this in email as well, but you can easily opt-out of Domain Helper here:
https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
The official Comcastic DNS hijack has begun.
Rather than get a network standard not found error, Comcast tries to be helpful -- to their pocketbook -- and directs me to an ad infested site. Didn't I pay enough money up front? What's next -- another tier of service for only $5/mo more so I don't have to be hijacked?
Doesn't anyone find it odd that their opt out page never loads? Or is it terminally busy due to all the opt out requests? Perhaps if they up the memory on the TRS-80 they have assigned to this task it would help.
If I had any option for another service in my area I'd be all over it. Like a Domain Helper!
Hi Dave,
Sorry for your difficulty in opting out. I'm going to email you separately, just in case you don't come back and read this comment, but we have a new, easier way to opt-out.
Directions are here: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
Basically, you log into Customer Central and hit a box to disable Domain Helper (then you might have to reboot your computer and your cable modem).
I submitted my request to opt out of the Domain Helper setup on Comcast for my residence, entered the MAC address, did everything according to the directions, several months ago and it still has not been cancelled. Why does Comcast use these unethical business practices? I am going to cancel my Comcast cable and Internet service immediately.
Hey, thanks for this awesome service that you rolled out. I enjoyed the spotty name resolution while you rolled this out in the middle of the day all day.
Willem, those pages haven't been removed we are just having some issues with the servers that host them. Our DNS team is working on getting them back online!
Oh, and editing your host file is a valid way of getting around Domain Helper, but I would caution people to make sure they back up their host file BEFORE editing it. I've seen many a problem due to a incorrectly edited host file. Backing it up lets you make sure you can quickly revert to a known good state if you encounter any problems (woah, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!).
Paul,
This is Scott, not Chris, but I agree with you. Most people don't know what DNS is, and shouldn't have to! They just know that they typed a URL and then got an error page. Domain Helper is designed to help those folks find what they're looking for faster. And like I've said countless times here (and I'm sure people are sick of it) we know there are those who want their DNS queries plain and simple for either philosophical or technical reasons and the opt-out is there. Plus savvy people can choose to use another set of DNS server (like OpenDNS).
The problem with not opting out and just using a different set of DNS servers is that you'll have to make that change on each computer... so I would suggest setting your router to the alternative DNS servers. Here is the OpenDNS tutorial on that very procedure:
https://www.opendns.com/start/router/
Until Comcast fixes the opt-out process, those of you comfortable with editing their host file can at least get rid of their annoying ad-loaded webpage by adding the following line to your host file
127.0.0.1 search2.comcast.com
The shortcut Comcast provided to connect to servers that do not have the so called "Domain Helper"
is no longer available.
I encourage everybody to write to their political representatives and look for alternative companies to provide Internet access. Let's vote with our $$$
Yes, Chris, thank you for that answer. Confirming that this is here to stay will let us handle it as appropriate for each of our situations.
One final thought. You mentioned the opt-out rate is low, and I would expect that to be very much the case. I would argue that the reason is not the difficulty of opting-out, but rather that the majority of your customers don't know the difference between DNS and their left arm. My guess is that if you had made this an opt-in option, that you would have seen an equally low rate, for exactly the same reason.
Interestingly, your assertion that this is likely a more technically astute crowd is probably correct, and thus we "get it". I myself found out about this DNS change, and this blog, from Slashdot. I personally have moved to OpenDNS, as it gives me the control I require, and has introduced me to some genuinely interesting features that I was unaware of before.
Hey Paul,
I'll answer that question. Higher ups have seen these comments, and there are no plans to roll back Domain Helper. Why? Clearly, commenters on this blog (and others) are not big fans of the service (that's putting it lightly) but the opt-out rate has been very low.
So why is it that some many people on the blog don't like it, which would you lead you to believe that lots and lots and lots of people are opting out... well of course the first thing you can say is, "It is so hard to opt out that people don't want to do it." Entering your modem's MAC address isn't the optimum process and we'll be making the opt out process much much easier soon... but even still if you compare our opt-out to the others on the market it is by far the easiest to use (and the opt-out link is right on the upper right hand corner of the screen so it is easy to find).
I think what we're seeing on the blog is that our more technically advanced users (as you pointed out) aren't a fan of Domain Helper (plus this post and the previous post were featured on Slashdot, and the Slashdot crowd REALLY doesn't like this... and I am going to assume that many of them don't have too many fond feelings for Comcast either but I can't speak for them) and they are expressing that displeasure here on the blog.
And that's what this blog is FOR, to give us an opportunity to talk with out customers, and other interested folks, about what we're doing. We've been very transparent about this whole roll out, which I don't think anyone can argue against, but we've also learned some things that'll help us roll out future products and services.
I hope that answers your question!
Sorry, Chris. Just because everyone else does it, does not make it right. Degrading yourself to the lowest common denominator is not how one goes about winning mind share.
I'll be brief this time, as you didn't really answer my most pressing question: Are the 250+ negative responses and zero positive responses going to impact Comcast's decision to deploy this change?
I am not concerned about fixing the problems that the deployment caused. I am interested to know if the higher ups are listening, and are going to roll back to the previous state.
Hi Willem, you should have received an email from us detailing Domain Helper. Sorry if you didn't get it!
We're also very close to releasing a very simple way of opting out that doesn't require you type in your modem's MAC address.
Paul,
Thank you for the detailed response. I've read every single comment posted on the blog postings, and I have posted a few responses when I could. I have been working very hard to get an easier to use opt-out method deployed since we launched this service nationwide which has been asked for many times in the comments on this blog. I understand that people have had issues opting out and I have personally worked around the clock to opt-out anyone that needed or wanted to be opted out on both technical sites, direct feedback, as well as social media sites. My goal when I was asked to launch this service was to ensure we did not break existing customers because I manage the DNS Architecture here at Comcast and making sure the DNS works is my top priority. While I understand some people don't like redirect services, they are fully deployed on almost every single ISP out there, and this is why we decided to bring this practice to light by submitting an IETF draft as well as posting exactly how we are filtering and how it works: Please see here: http://networkmanagement.comcast.net/DomainHelperLogic.htm I also made sure we posted our DNS IPs on http://dns.comcast.net so if you wanted to opt-out by entering the IPs in yourself, you could do so immediately and not wait for the current method.
I do want to address some of your comments directly as I think they summarize some of the recent complaints and deserve a mention.
The first that caught my eye was the VPNs not working. I would need some more technical information to completely comment on this, but if anyone is using a VPN on Domain Helper DNS servers, you should have these overridden by the VPN concentrator or RAS that you are connecting to and your DNS queries will be sent to your corporate DNS. If your running split horizon DNS in your VPN then you have other problems to deal from security and other issues that having nothing to do with Domain Helper.
The second is your comments by ICANN, specifically the SSAC papers that have been published on DNS Redirection. I've read the papers and they deal with TLD and Root operators performing wild card redirection and its impact on the DNS security as a whole. They do not make any recommendations for ISPs or ASPs on this matter. We have spoken with ICANN at one of the SSAC meetings and we are working on detailing some of their concerns in our Internet draft.
Finally we are very close to delivering a one click option for opt-out in our Customer Central application. This should be deployed very soon and provided an instantaneous opt-out with no need for knowing your MAC address. You will need to know your comcast.net primary user account to use this service.
I have listened to the complaints in these posts and am trying to get them corrected as quickly as possible.
Thanks
This "helper" is scumware and is sneaked in without customer consent. I never received an email asking whether I wanted it. I will complain to the FCC because to uninstall it requires:
1 Permission ???? how about asking permission first
2 Mac # how many customers know what this is
Shame on you Comcast. That's what happens when companies become too large and don't care about their customers any more. This is all about making more money by advertising
In case this comment is filtered out,, I will make sure it appears on other sites
Chris, a couple serious questions if you don't mind.
Between this blog post and the other related post from July (http://blog.comcast.com/2009/07/domain-helper-service-here-to-help-you.html), you've received over 250 almost universally negative comments (at the time of this posting) to your new DNS Hijacking/Advertispam change. I have scanned your previous blog entries, and this quantity of comments is two orders of magnitude greater than any other blog post you have made. Clearly you have antagonized a large number of customers.
As has been pointed out, the people posting comments here are your most technically astute customers, and will act as advocates (or not) on your behalf to a much larger audience than you realize. The fact that ICANN views DNS Hijacking as a security threat has been pointed out to you. The question of whether this is legal in terms of FCC regulations is still in question. Individuals' VPN connections to their offices are breaking. Opt-out is not easy: if it was easy, you'd already use the IP address, email address, and MAC address that you have on file. Opt-in would have been a much less antagonistic approach. There have been many more very good reasons posted as to why this change is such as bad idea.
I do appreciate the monopoly status you have in many markets, and that due to this status Comcast believes it can do whatever it wants without repercussion. However, my question is this: can you please advise the commenters on this blog whether or not these comments are reaching the people who make these decisions, and whether it is making any difference? If it is making a difference, perhaps provide a timetable on the rollback of these changes? And finally, if this is not making a difference, please explain why you solicit feedback via a blog at all?
Please answer as a human and not as a "corporate communications officer." We can tell the difference. I know that you are paid to paint Comcast in the most positive light in everything that you type, but please try to be honest with us this time - we have been nothing but honest with you in the 250+ comments on this topic. You call this "a place for conversations with Comcast", but so far on this topic, you have posted nothing but variations on how great of a change this is for everybody, and how easy it is to opt-out.
Thanks.
My mother has been wanted to switch from Comcast for a while, but I was trying to convince her to stay since your internet hasn't been as bad as it was recently. And then you go and do something like this... Congrats, Comcast, you've once again managed to put your own greed and selfishness above the needs and wishes of your customers.
"I appreciate that some people aren't thrilled with Domain Helper..."
That almost made me laugh.
So, I'm reluctant to provide my email address, given Comcast's feeling that it's acceptable to serve ads on an opt-out rather than an opt-in basis, but I suppose this is what email filters are for...
To have made this opt out is NOT a "best practice". I switched from IE to Firefox in large part because I did not appreciate MS's decision to redirect from bad links without prior consent. Now it seems I may have to switch ISP's for the same reason. As much of a pain as it is switching email addresses, at least I don't have to crawl on the floor behind my computer to look up a MAC address in order to do so. I just call Verizon, and they'll even auto-forward my emails for a while. All I'll need to do is get used to a new channel line-up, but I seem to recall their search features making that easy enough. Thankfully, my grandparents went with Verizon already when they got their first computer, as I can only imagine the confused phone calls I would have gotten every time they mis-typed something and could not simply fix the single typo but had to re-type the whole thing.
What I'd like to know is, will the ad revenue my hits generated - before I finally got around to copying down my MAC address to opt out (a ridiculous requirement, if you are connecting to the opt out page from the modem your are actually opting out), which I will later follow up by adding "*.comcast.com" to my ad blocker - come off my bill? Failing that, should I be contacting an attorney regarding violation of the Wiretap Act, which "makes it a federal crime and a civil wrong permitting the recovery of punitive damages and attorney's fees for intercepting the contents of a person's communications over an interstate communications network." Given that this was not part of the original Terms of Service I agreed to when signing up, it seems to me this should have required an opt IN policy to be legal. But I'm just a layman, so what do I know. I would hope someone in the legal department looked into this beforehand, so I look forward to a response concerning their interpretation of Comcast's liability in that regard.
Sure it's "easy" to opt out, for those of us that know what we are doing. You can tell us how easy it is, until you are blue in the face, but most people don't know what an IP is, let alone DNS. Most probably don't even remember how to login to their router! This broke VPN for us, and quite a few of our employees complained about it this week. I couldn't figure it out today, but since it was home-work connections, it wasn't a priority. You pis$ed off the CEO of my company, he was forced to use his Verizon card to get on, which has very little signal at his home. I can fix it, but I have to call about 175 people this week while they are home on the "Comcast" network. Are you serious? I get paid salary for this (below average in this economy), so that's taking money/time from me, because it has to be done. Multiply this by about 15 locations around the country, that's a lot of our techs you just angered.
On your redirect page, if you simply had 2 or 3 clicks to opt out, I/we could instruct our users to do the legwork, but nope, now I have to do it. How hard could it be, you know the MAC, you know the IP, and you know they are legitimately on your network. Opt-out could be made fully and truly automated, you know this to be true.
Susan, the successfully opted-out email should come to whatever email address you entered into the opt-out page.
If you can't wait for the opt-out process you can always manually change your DNS settings to one of the opted-out servers listed here: http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.html
I'll send you an email directly with this information as well.
Can anyone tell me if the 'successfully opted-out email' will come to the one they asked me to submit at the time of opting out, or to our Comcast email?..because we don't use our Comcast email, amd I have been anxiously checking my regular email to find the opted-out notification, but, shockingly, it's been two days, and no email.
I don't know a lot about DNS Hijacking, etc., , but I know I don't like to be forced into anything without prior notice and my consent. I work from home taking incoming calls for a great company, and this Domain Helper has caused me and all my fellow workers on Comcast to not be able to work from home--huge inconvenience, every day now since Monday when my company finally figured out what kept causing all our computers to crash every 10 minutes. Hence, the frequent checking for the opted-out email. Calling in resulted in no help...no one said there was another way to avoid it, and hey, the opt out system worked great...NOT! I don't understand how it can take two days in such a high tech world. When I called in to see if there was any way to speed up the process, the agent said since I took incoming calls for a company, I needed a Business account. WHAT? It's not my business I'm running..I'm an employee for someone else. Ever hear the saying, "If it aint broke, don't fix it'? Thanks for nothing, Comcast! I'm shopping! Ba-bye
I was talking to the U-Verse salseman last month. I will be calling him back.
Of course, 98% of your internet subscribers probably have no idea what DNS is and will not notice that anything is amiss. But anyone with even a basic understanding of DNS can see that this is wrong. You'll probably get away with it though. Congratulations.
I did the follow up link and received an email "You will then be sent a follow-up email message once you have been successfully opted-out."
Why it should take 2 days is beyond me. Three days and still No successfully opted-out message.
Josh, I appreciate your comments. If you are having issues with opting out, please contact me in the http://forums.comcast.net under High Speed Internet ->DNS Information. Please post the issues you are having and I will verify your account information and help you get opted out. You can also set your DNS servers to the following which are the opted out ones: http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.html Thanks
Scott, seriously, who will this help? The users you are talking about are the "noobs". They use IE anyway, and IE automatically directs them to MSN search!
Who will this service actually help? People who are smart enough to disable IE's "search from address bar" feature, but not smart enough to know what the "page not found" error message means?
All you've done is change the search engine that appears in a default installation of Windows when someone mistypes a link.
Josh, I know we'll never agree on this point but I do think that Domain Helper will, in fact, be helpful to some users. Those that don't like it can easily opt-out of it (by either using our opt-out page, or changing their DNS settings).
Chris, you know as well as I do that this service has never and will never help a single person. It is an unethical way for Comcast to make more money. I have been unable to do an important part of my job in the domaining industry because of this illegal program. You might be wondering why I don't just opt-out? I have, several times and it is not working. I will be switching to another ISP is this problem isn't fixed. I've contacted support about this issue and the guy I talked to didn't even know what a domain was.
Straight and simple DNS HIJACKING. Why does comcast expect it's users to follow the rules (RFCs) when it instead takes a leap away from transparency and HIJACKS traffic. Just on principle alone I am looking for another service provider who will not OPT ME IN to things without my knowledge. DNS SPAMMING.
BR, the Opt-out page only works on the Comcast network. If you're trying to load it from your office it won't work (unless, of course, your place of business uses Comcast as their ISP).
Secondly, there is a bug (or flaw, depending on how you see it) with the way we have our blog set up. Basically, it thinks that all visitors are coming from the same IP address. The voting process for both comments and entries is limited to one vote per IP address (which is what is causing the problem).
Two more things:
I think it's awesome that the opt-out link doesn't work.
I also think it's awesome that when I try to vote on a comment by clicking the stars, I get a prompt that says I've already voted on the item. No, I haven't.
NO NO NO! Do NOT hijack my browsing. I do not want your interference when I'm on the web. If I screw up a domain name, it's on me. I don't need YOU to try to think for me!
How about instead of "making it easy to opt out", you "make it easy to opt in". That's like telling me "If you don't want someone selling magazines at your front door, ask them to leave". This solves nothing -- I don't want them there in the first place! This is nothing more than a different kind of spam. It's just an opportunity for you to try to focus my browsing so that I go where you want me to, and so that I see whatever ads you want me to see, all to increase your bottom line.
No thank you!
Here's how you look to your customers. Pass this on to the geniuses you have up there in management, would ya ?
In July we announced the beginning of a trial for "Punch Me In The Face", which provides customers with a service to punch them in the face approximately every twenty minutes (see the original posting on this service). Based on the success of the market trial we have now decided to roll out the service to the rest of our customers! Customers will receive an email explaining the service and how it works. If customers do not wish to be punched in the face, they can use our easy to use opt-out located here: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net and we'll be making the opt-out process easier in the future!
To find out how "Punch Me In The Face" works, please click here.
We hope that customers find this service helpful and look forward to any feedback you might have!
Love and sunshine and ponies,
Comcast
xxx
This link does nto work https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
@Scott McNulty: "Here is a list of all of our DNS servers organized by which ones are Domain Helper enabled and the state they service: ..."
Thanks for sharing. That's exactly how I suspected you had it set up, and confirms the change in service I saw,and the behavior I was getting, as I was default 'Opted In' It pays to get the service updates.
Jonas
Jonas, it is possible to manually assign DNS servers to different devices in your home. Here is a list of all of our DNS servers organized by which ones are Domain Helper enabled and the state they service:
http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.html
If you use the opt-out link it opts out at the cable modem level, so nothing behind that cable modem will get IP addresses from one of our Domain Helper DNS servers.
As a customer who is already disgusted over customer service problems with Comcast, finding out about what is nothing other than DNS hijacking is ludicrous. It is unacceptable that by default all customers are opted in for this "service", if you dare call it such a thing. I for one, am one of many customers who do not use my Comcast e-mail address so even if an e-mail was sent to me, I never would have seen it.
This is a very shady business practice and as already mentioned in previous posts, one that has clearly upset your tech savvy customers such as myself. Yet another reason why I will be moving to another ISP. Good luck to you in keeping customers, with "services" like this DNS hijacking, you are going to need it.
What a piece of garbage. I went to the opt-out page, submit it, and got a nice little e-mail telling me it happen. power cycle router and modem like the e-mail say, just to find my modem had been UNREGISTER! What a piece of crap!
When Comcast moved into my area and took over Adelphia, the service got substantially (around 40%) more expensive, channels I watched disappeared from my lineup in spite of these increases, I was incorrectly told my CableCard was no longer supported and the anemic lineup I was supposed to be getting disappeared completely. I got so fed up with it that I cancelled my service.
In spite of that poor experience with your cable TV service, I recently thought about giving Comcast's Internet services a try. I was planning to give you the benefit of the doubt, and that the problems with the Adelphia takeover were just integration problems.
Reading this article (by way of Ars Technica) has convinced me you don't deserve another chance. As a direct result of this extremely bad decision by Comcast, I have decided against signing up for service.
I know I can work around this by using other DNS servers. That's not the point. This is now a matter of principle.
This new service appears to be similar to something 'OpenDNS' has provided for free. The difference being OpenDNS is more customizable by the end user -- Particularly if you have an issue with VPN Internal addresses, i.e. if this fails do X, and make sure you do 'X' -- the new service breaks that. (from some comments I've read)
Now I'm just a user, (with a background in IT, Computer Science, and TCP/IPv4 Networking) -- so correct me if this is off:
-- Depending on if the service is on or off, you are assigned 'Helper' or 'Normal' DNS Servers, via DHCP. Is it possible to manually assign these, if some in the household like the service and some don't? That is it's not an all or nothing OptIn or OptOut?
Ubuntu's Network Manager seems to let me pick my DNS Servers on the fly, and I can switch between OpenDNS, Comcast, or other servers.
I find your lack of respect for the wishes of your customers astounding.
You should be utterly and completely ashamed of yourselves.
EPIC FAIL
If it's so easy to opt out, Scott, why do you have to make it eaiser? having to go get the modem down off the wall where the comcast tech mounted it, get the MAC address, submit a form, wait for well over a day to get an authorization email, and then another day for the opt out to actually take place isn't easy. If your service is so damned great, make it OPT-IN. You would have pissed off absolutely NO CUSTOMERS had you done that.
This is a "service"?
Yes, I'll opt-out of your DNS hijacking service! I'll use OpenDNS or anyone else I can find to keep you from snooping my surfing habits.
I already know that I'm not paying for customer service or reliability or consistent bandwidth or reliable VOIP. Why should I pay for your advertisements as well?
I'm biding my time until FIOS comes to my area.
Hey Michael, I appreciate that some people aren't thrilled with Domain Helper (just take a look at some of these comments and that is obvious) but that's why we have made it very easy to opt-out, and encourage anyone who doesn't want to use this service to opt-out, which you can do in a couple of ways:
1. Use our opt-out link: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/ which requires your cable modem's MAC address (of course you aren't a Comcast customer, but if you were you can usually find the MAC address by pointing your browser to http://192.168.100.1. There are more instructions on the opt-out page. Keep in mind that if you aren't on Comcast's network the opt-out page won't load.
2. You can use different DNS servers on your computer. We have a list of Comcast DNS servers, both Domain Helper enabled and those that are automatically opted out, at this Web site: http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.html There are also a number of third party DNS servers you can use (some people have mentioned that your local university might have DNS servers that are available for public use).
We're also working on the opt-out process to make it easier to use and we are working with the IETF to make sure there are industry standards for this sort of thing (you can read the draft here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-livingood-dns-redirect-00).
This makes me happy like nobody's business that I didn't pick Comcast when I was looking for a new ISP a month ago. Comcast, you do realize that you're getting on the bad side of your tech-savvy customers, right? And you do realize that those are your customers who have a strong influence over the tech decisions of friends and family, right? You're actively pissing off the most important segment of your market; keep up the good work.
Dear Comcast,
I am utterly disgusted at your business practices. Any inroads you were making with things like twitter and open blogging like this is being lost very quickly. Do not forget that the savvy people who understand the shenanigans you are up to are the ones that are likely most faithful and would tell others to stay, or run away. You have succeeded in tipping me over, and will run away from your monopoly the instant I can (oh aren't you happy you are a monopoly almost everywhere?). I will be first in line on any class action lawsuit for your monopolistic, bully behaviour.
No, you should not have rolled out the dns hijacking feature. You knew this when you heard the comments from the trial period. And you don't care because you after all are just a greedy corporation. Treat customers like crap, and they will grow to have families that teach their kids about you, and you will in years to come find yourself out of business. Good luck.
I'm another user who is not happy having my dns hijacked. This would be OK if it was opt-in. Inexcusable as opt-out.
The time given for the opt-out to take effect is two days.
1.9s day more than it should be.
I already went through this once in July. Then, after complaining about it, Comcast made the opt-out URL available to me - but notably the company never asked me to opt in to this stupid DNS redirection ploy.
Now, two weeks after supposedly being "opted out," I'm getting the Comcastic DNS redirect again.
Thus I have to ask, does Comcast require a twice monthly does of customer ill-will just to make it through the night?
I would've thought ICAAN's response to this same ruse by Verisign six years ago would've given you a clue. You don't own the Internet and don't have the right to screw around with the domain name system.
This is pure crap ! Who allowed you to hijack my machine's traffic ? I certainly didn't
You know perfectly well that people are overwhelmingly against this invasion of privacy and you are such hypocrits that you say the exact opposite !
You've just lost a customer, I only give my business to companies that respect their customers, you're clearly not among them.
I noticed you didn't say based on feedback. Ostensibly this site is about gathering feedback from customers yet no one left any feedback in support of this new "service" and it was rolled out anyway. Based on "success" which in Comcast speak means "income."
Clearly the feedback gathered here is ignored and this blog is nothing more than a marketing tool.
With all the people clicking through to this blog thanks to the bad press, I'd have thought it would be slathered in ads. Actually, maybe it is, I wouldn't know since I use ABP.
Never got your e-mail comcast. I wish the opt-out web site was functional. Modifying the destination of my packets is a big no-no. Why must comcast repeatedly spearhead intrusive packet policies? If i didn't know better i would say consumer service ranks low on the totem pole. I pay 70 a month for just the internet and you give me this? Come on!!!!!
I just found out about this today, and I'm not happy. This is not ok AT ALL. If Comcast hand not forced every other ISP out of my neighborhood, I'd switch in an instant... now I have to waste my time opting out?
Come on Verizon, bring that sweet, sweet FiOS to my part of town.
Why use this while I can use OpenDNS thats better? Has the dns service from comcast been upgraded recently?
The response to your "service" on this blog and everywhere else on the net has been uniformly negative. Why not just give up and give all customers working DNS?
While you're at it, how about you guys work on making your DNS servers reply to queries in less than a second instead of the 5 second response time that is more usual during peak hours?
Hey S Lightcap, working URLs shouldn't be re-directed. I'm going to send you an email to get some more information from you.
This is horrid. It is even redirecting working URLs to the spam page. Now that I can get Verizon in my building, I am seriously considering dropping Comcast all together.
"Domain Helper" -- nonsense! "DNS Hijacker" is more like it. We can always count on Comcast to do the wrong thing.
I don't have OpenDNS forced down my throat. I have to opt-in to use their stuff. That's the difference
Hey JS, Thanks for posting that link to our DNS IP addresses. I meant to do that myself, but I was wrapped up in a conference all day yesterday (which is also why comments took a little longer to approve on the blog over the last 24 hours!).
I understand that there is a vocal segment of the population that doesn't like services like this (though I should point out that FiOS and OpenDNS do much the same thing... OpenDNS also offers a number of other DNS 'add-ons' which people find helpful) and that's why we not only authored an IETF draft in the hopes of creating some industry standards around this so we can do it the right way. Check out the draft here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-livingood-dns-redirect-00
All that being said, there will still be some people who don't like this and never want to be a part of it. There are a couple of ways to make sure that you won't be impacted by Domain Helper:
1. Opt-out: https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/
2. Manually change your DNS servers (either to a couple on the list JS shared or a third party DNS provider of your choice).
We are working on making the opt-out process even simpler.
Bad news! I'd rather have a transparent internet experience than this hijack. This is dumbing down the internet to the lowest common denominator. I've opted out but the service should be strictly opt-in. Another strike for me to consider opting out of Comcast entirely - except you have the monopoly in my area!
I'm surprised its not in this post but over on dslreports one of the more helpful Comcast posters (techs, forumites? - whatever the term is) provided a link to the DNS servers with and without this added "service".
http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.html
If you manually set your computer or router to use the Opt-Out addresses, no more Domain Helper interference. Worth using while you're waiting on the Opt-Out system to catch up (it didn't work for me and I had to have support manually do it).
Beyond that, I agree with Jan's comments below. I understand why but this disincentives your techy users (yes some of those use more of your service but we also pay for the higher tiers and are trend setters - READ: we tell our non-techy friends what to use). My current real issue is the lack of upload speed on my connection (can't get more than 1mbs) but this also doesn't win any Comcast any cookies.
I hope you're getting it by now, if you somehow didn't guess before, that this sort of hijacking is an excellent way to anger and alienate a large segment of your customer base.
And why could it possibly take two business days for you to stop this service for me? That's ridiculous.
Just stumbled on to this after being slapped in the face with the "domain helper". Looks like you forgot to send me an email explaining the service and offering the opt-out before implementation. It's one thing after another. Throttling p2p. My bill has slowly increased by 30% in the last three years. I don't even get HD or a DVR for what I'm paying. Only a digital STB in one room. Now DNS hijacking?
Stuff it Comcast. I'm going shopping.
What, exactly, gives Comcast the right to intentionally cause a security breach on my network and make it an opt-out process? Because that is what you've done. I first noticed the problem when spam started pouring through my firewall, thanks to your now broken DNS system.
I swear, FiOS can't arrive fast enough. As soon as it does, you've lost this customer permanently.
It's bad enough that you have to opt-out of the service to begin with, but the fact that the opt out process doesn't work, makes it even worse. How is this any different from any other malware that would infect a PC and redirect their browser other than it's done at the server level and not on my PC? I've been waiting over 12 hours for my email to allow me to authorize the opt-out and calls to tech support are of no use.
I want nothing to do with this "service". Also that fact that the email notifying me of it came across in broken, plain text instead of anything resembling an email from an actual company caused me to waste time investigating this to make sure it wasn't some sort of scam. In the future please try to at least make your emails to customers look "real". I would also like to see directions on how to use non-comcast DNS servers on the opt-out page so I wouldn't have to worry about your "service" at all.
Dear comcast,
I understand times are tough, and you need to make a quick buck. And you already checked for spare change underneath the office soda machine.
So I see how enticing the prospect of dns-hijacked advertisement injections can be. But please remember all the other stuff that you have recently stuffed up our behinds, without lubrication.
- Sneaky price hikes
- Monthly quotes on unlimited services
- "Traffic shaping"
- Whatever else the marketoids come up with this week
Can I _please_ just have an IP feed, that works as contractually agreed upon?
No gimmicks, no "special features", no "surprises".
Best regards,
A loyal subscriber, who pays his bills on time each month.
Dylan makes some very good points. None of your customers want this. Don't try to disguise this as anything other than corporate greed.
And why not make this "feature" opt-in? I haven't seen one acceptable answer to this question.
Has anybody at Comcast read this? http://www.icann.org/en/committees/security/sac041.pdf
If ICANN labels NXDomain wildcarding as a security threat, then why does Comcast subject all their customers to it, requiring them to opt-out if they want to enjoy standards-based Internet service?
The web page explaining how Domain Helper works explicitly says that Domain Helper works by "redirecting a web user". How does your Domain Helper service differentiate between a "web user" and an application or service relying on standard DNS protocols to determine if a domain is valid or not? Or do you make no such distinction?
Maybe I'm missing something, but without any such distinction being made, your service seems like an egregious violation of Internet standards.
With regard to implementing this service in the interest of "helping your customers", I've been reading the blog and forum posts you have made about this service and I have not found anyone praising this service. Like, at all. In fact, almost all the public feedback I've seen has been overwhelmingly negative. Usually you have some, even small, percentage of people who are willing to speak up in support of some issue that a louder, more vocal minority might hate. But in this case, I really can't find anyone who likes it. It really makes me wonder why you are implementing it in the face of such unilateral opposition from your customers.
Chris does have a sense of humor! I've fixed the post. Thanks for the heads up.
The writer has a sense of humor?
"wed addressses"?