If you are a Comcast High-Speed Internet users, you may have already noticed that if you enter a bad URL in your web browser, rather than seeing the general “page cannot be displayed” message, you now get a search page with advertising on it. Comcast calls the program “Domain Helper” and it has now been rolled out to all Comcast users.
The new page users will see includes Yahoo! search results, paid advertisements, as well as a suggestion for the correct domain the user was trying to reach. Comcast is not the first to do this as my Verizon DSL is the same way. According to a blog post on July 9, 2009, Chris Griffiths, Manager, DNS Engineering for Comcast, announced that they were introducing it as a market trial in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington. As of August 4, 2009, however, it has now been rolled out to all customers.
On the bright side, if you decide that the new “Domain Helper” is annoying or you simply don’t like it, you can choose to opt out of the service from the Domain Helper search page. So at least they are giving customers the option, but the problem is, according to some of the comments that I have read, you have to enter your cable modem’s MAC address online in order to opt-out of the service, which is kind of ridiculous in my opinion.
What do you think? Should Comcast be hijacking users bad URL requests?
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I work in the K-12 Education field as a Technical Support Specialist / Web Specialist at the St. Joseph County ISD in Southwest Michigan. I also do a lot of freelance web development in my free time which I absolutely love doing. I am also an avid gamer when it comes to the PC or the XBOX 360 and have been known to enjoy a good LAN party. 
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