Comments on: Is Dell Stealing Your Traffic And Cashing In On Non-WWW Urls?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:23:32 +0000

I think Dell/Google fixed this so that it does not work this same way anymore. But, they are hiding the hyperlinks of their advertizers so that they are not displayed in the status bar when you hover your mouse over them! Nice trick, but I don’t think it’s real ethical. Especially since they should know that computer security people try to teach people to look at their status bar to see where a hyperlink is actually sending them.

By: tbone

tbone — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 14:23:21 +0000

There is one piece of software that needs to be removed in addition to the Google stuff – it’s called “URL Assistant”.

Once you do that you should no longer be hijacked.

What a bunch of BS – I paid for this?

By: Lin Ennis

Lin Ennis — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 16:03:59 +0000

This is so irritating! I noticed it a few months ago, too, but can’t remember which new cxomputer it was. I bought an Acer in June and an HP Media Center in November. Particulaly when going to my own sites, like solarhomesite.com, I type in just the s-o-l-a-r-h-o-m-e-s-i-t-e-.-c-o-m. I was landing on what appeared to be a search page containing variations on those words–and LOTS of ads! I don’t tolerate that kind of control so I overcame it, probably using a method like those described above.

In a similar vein, Brian, I’d be interested in what you have to say about typing a search term in, landing on a web site that has the exact phrase and several closely related phrases on it, which make one think EUREKA, then clicking the links to see nothing happen…one doesn’t even land in Topeka. What’s with that?

By: OthersDoItToo

OthersDoItToo — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:02:47 +0000

Dell Hardware support helped me get the problem fixed http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/chat/en/hardware_chat?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

By: OthersDoItToo

OthersDoItToo — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 02:21:21 +0000

I used to have a Juno account and every error referred me to a JUNO search page. When I got a new computer, it seems Dell does it. There has to be a way to conquer this. When I get an errror in a URL, I want a plain old ERROR page! I have had pages that are not really errors turn into errors and then force me to look at stupid “search results” just because some ad on the page was not working. I hate the Browser Address Error Redirector feature!

By: Dell user

Dell user — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:54:58 +0000

i have a dell dimension running XP Home and SP2 , and any site i type without the www goes directly to the page intended …

so while this pc is fairly old ( considering the fast-paced upgrading that is usual ) it still runs high-end media with ease , and has been updgraded several times .

By: “…it’s all Good.” » Blog Archive » Yahoo Ya-where?

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:36:36 +0000

[...] So next, I Googled the B.A.E.R. phrase and found a good match at Gadgetizer. Yes, that described the problem pretty well, although at that page the problem happened when the “www” was left off a typed-in URL, and mine was labeled “Sorry, we couldn’t find http://view.atdmt.com……”; and I believe that was caused by the custom HOSTS file. [...]

By: J Moore

J Moore — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:23:21 +0000

I’ve got the same problem with my new Inspiron E1705. There is a page that says this behavior can be stopped by going into the Control Panel and using Add/Remove Programs to remove either “Browser Address Error Redirector” or “GoogleAFE”. Well, there’s no program by either name in Add/Remove. I use Firefox or Opera almost exclusively anyway, but sites like my bank demand IE6. PITA.

By: Paul Short

Paul Short — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:27:22 +0000

Hi Brian, I understand what you’re saying, but when people want to go to a site by typing in the url, they want to go to that site whether they type the url with the www or not. They don’t want to go to DELL’s page of PPC links. DELL has the browser set to redirect, while other configs of the same browser on other computers don’t.

By: brian

brian — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:21:46 +0000

This is just a customization built into the registry. It is defined as your default search engine. Early versions of IE had this built in and you could search by typing GO in the browsers Address Bar. Now it is a ? . So Dell is just sending people to their own, probably very basic, search engine with probably tons of ads and tracking cookies.
The Solution: http://www.itworld.com/App/255/IWD010423oplivingston/
Or just do a search for “Default Search Engine” IE
with quotes