How Time Warner Cable is Making Money off of Unregistered Domains

It all started while we were working late night (read: we were a little delirious). I was writing copy for our Rockville lawn care page when I get interrupted by Jonas, one of my cofounders, who was taking a break to watch videos to get ideas for his camper van.

“Check this pants drawer out! I’m gonna put one in my van. You know, I bet I could build and sell these things. Is pantsdrawer.com available?”

This is a pants drawer, for those of you wondering.

I immediately type in pantsdrawer.com into my browser. Nope, it’s taken. Someone’s squatting on it. "Who?“ he asked. I took a closer look. Time Warner Cable? Wait. WTF? Why is our ISP squatting on domain names?

Turns out nobody was squatting on the domain - it was available. Rather, Time Warner Cable is redirecting unregistered domains to their own landing page, where they show paid ads.

The result we got:

Turns out the domain is in fact available.

And when a friend tried it on a different ISP, he got nothing.

So, Time Warner Cable is managing to make money by injecting their own content into places that don’t technically exist on the web? Something doesn’t seem right about that. It’s as if I were to go to an empty plot of land and nail up a billboard advertising whatever I deem fit.

I dig into it a little more, and find that Time Warner Cable offers the following explanation:

"You entered an unknown web address that was used to present site suggestions that you may find useful. Clicking any of these suggestions provides you with search results, which may include relevant sponsored links.”

So my ISP is doing me a favor by showing me paid ads that match my search intent. Sorry, but this does not hold water.

First of all, the Zendesk banner ad has nothing to do with my intent to visit Pantsdrawers.com (I visited Zendesk earlier, so it was more than likely retargeted).

But more importantly, when you type in a URL, you have one clearly defined intent: to go to that website. Showing you ads for different websites does not help you get to that intent. For example, if I misspelled Lawnstarter.com to Lawnsarter.com, this is what I would be shown:

Nowhere does it try and fix my original intent to visit Lawnstarter.com. Rather, it shows me sites that are either competing or completely irrelevant (such as the Audi ad). This is far different than a Google search where it tries to match your original intent.

How far will they go?

So, Time Warner Cable has successfully capitalized on domain mispellings. I think most would agree that this practice is sketchy at best, even if it only affects us when we misspell websites. But with cable companies having so much control, where do they draw the line?

My friend Hayden found that his cable company, Access Media 3, was injecting Javascript packets to websites. His blog post invoked the following response from Access Media 3:

“I do want to let you know this is an advertising tool. Access Media 3 does not track users’ web activity, collect personally identifiable information, nor sell users’ personal information. Aggregate browsing information may be used to deliver an advertisement that is more tailored to our users’ perceived interests.”

So Access Media 3 has deemed themselves qualified to serve consumers better, more personalized ads (without tracking their activity, of course). If they are truly swapping out ads, they are stealing revenue from the site owner/ad network and impressions from the advertiser. That’s not right.

Why does this matter?

Was this a big deal? Did this really affect my life? Not really. I’d much rather be focused on getting our Orlando lawn mowing operation up and running than writing this post. And I could easily do all my web browsing on a proxy server if I really cared.

But I think small signs like this are worth paying attention to, because there is such huge potential for ISPs to misuse and abuse their power. Most of us in the startup community would agree that net neutrality is incredibly important, and every little example like this illustrates why.

I would encourage everyone to keep an eye out for instances of ISPs overstepping their bounds, no matter how big or small. Make these examples known, because if nobody acts now, we are at the mercy of ISPs to decide how far they themselves are allowed to encroach on our browsing experience.

And for any of you aspiring pants drawer sellers, sorry, but pantsdrawer.com now belongs to my co-founder.