Today wecognized seek-aid.com domain as a results page for bad domains in Safari and Netscape (instead of simple ‘server not available’).
Example:
Bad domain: alkjdf.gom
RESULT: http://www5.seek-aid.com/search?qo=alkjdf.gom&rn=c3OeKgOdtZ6u6Qv
The resulting page did not occur when using Comcast Broadband. It only occurred using the WOWWAY Internet service. A call to a WOWWAY customer service elicited a response that they were not causing the search result page from seek-aid.com. The fact that this is showing up on WOWWAY and not Comcast, points to the fact that there is referral happening from the DNS servers from WOWWAY that are not happening from Comcast.net.
The page has what appears to be affiliate links and a Yahoo! search box. There is an About link at the bottom of the page which does not show any company information. The About link brinks users to a Opt-Out page that gives instruction to select to stop seeing the aid-seek.com result page. The following is an excerpt from that page:
This service automatically eliminates many of the error pages you may encounter as you surf the web. No software was installed on your computer for this service to work. If you don’t want this feature, feel free to opt-out at any time by selecting below:
Radio Button Opt In (Current Setting)
Radio Button Opt Out
Update Button
Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a “cookie” indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: “www5.seek-aid.com”.
It was also noted recently that forwarded domains that are registered with GoDaddy.com were not following all the way throught to their forwared domains. WOWWAY users had to hit the enter key a second time to get the desired page to display. It is unknown if this is related to something new that WOWWAY might be doing with their DNS servers.