486140 - Some DNS servers prevent Keyword URL

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Gabriele Best [:Gabri]]

Some DNS servers, such as OpenDNS, prevent the Keyword URL.
The current value is:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

But I think (I am not sure) it is deprecated. If we remove the "&gfns=1" substring, it works properly but without Feeling Lucky search. :(

We should set a new one.

Comment 1

[Gabriele Best [:Gabri]]

To "fix" this "strange behavior", we can change the order of the variables on the query, like so:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfns=1&sourceid=navclient&q=

Or, if you want make it harder to filter by DNS, something like that:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfns=1&sourceid=navclient&rls=org.mozilla:it:official&client=firefox-a&q=

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

By "some" do you mean only the opendns server ?
How about fixing the opendns server ?
Why should we change this just because one single DNS server decided to filter such URLs ?

Comment 3

[Gabriele Best [:Gabri]]

Lots of Internet users use OpenDNS servers and I think this feature is used widely. And I don't think this behavior is accidental...

Comment 4

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Er, isn't OpenDNS just refusing to return NXDOMAIN, therefore disabling the keyword.URL feature entirely? Sounds INVALID to me.

I don't see how the value of the keyword.URL preference would actually be having any effect here. As DNS providers all they can do is affect the result of hostname lookups... they shouldn't ever be seeing query parameters.

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

As DNS providers, they can and do proxy all www.google.com traffic through their own machines. See http://www.opendns.com/support/article/244 for their current explanation of why, or http://blog.opendns.com/2007/05/22/google-turns-the-page for a previous explanation.

Whether an individual chooses to use OpenDNS or their ISP chooses to use it, they are choosing to use it, and the way OpenDNS run their business is by sniffing domain typos and by sniffing particular search URLs, and turning them into ad views for themselves. If someone has chosen to use them on their own, they can turn it off by editing their settings with OpenDNS (in fact, even if their ISP chose to use them, they probably can), and if they can't, then they have a problem to address with their ISP and/or OpenDNS.

But this bug is invalid: what happens is that Firefox looks up the IP address for www.google.com through the DNS provider the user says to use, and that DNS provider lies about the IP address, giving the address of one of their own machines which will intercept traffic to a particular pattern of URLs at www.google.com and return a redirect to their own site instead. Changing the value of keyword.URL would not only not be the right thing to do (since there's no problem with the URL other than that you or your ISP have set up your computer and your network in a way that will make it return something other than what you want), it would be pointless: OpenDNS already pwns all your traffic to www.google.com, they can start redirecting any other query string patterns any time they want, certainly long before Firefox releases something with a changed URL.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

verified invalid

Comment 7

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Just for whoever's interested - you can disable OpenDNS's "smarts" by disabling shortcuts and the OpenDNS proxy. Just make sure that your IP's up to date with OpenDNS, and keyword searches will work for you again.

Comment 8

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Unless you can't: when an ISP, rather than an individual, chooses to use OpenDNS, they may or may not register their entire IP address block so that you can't claim your IP address and make any changes (other than changing to another ISP).