Just let me opt-out by default please. Thanks.

So in my ongoing quest to find all things interesting on the internet, I started noticing something strange this weekend. Do you ever type in the wrong URL for a particular website you want to access? We all do.

Normally you’d see an error like this in Firefox:

But if you have Time Warner Cable as your ISP, then you might have started to notice this when you mistype your URL:

Now I didn’t think much of it at first, but then the more that I ran into it, the more irritating it got. So Time Warner Cable is in a way, invading my privacy. Yes I suppose it might be useful if I meant to type in www.annenbergonlinecommunities.com (correct) vs www.annenbergonlinecommunitiess.com (which is incorrect). But more disturbingly, is what is suggested to me as “related searches”. I’m not sure what the hell is going on here, (I clear my cookies out all the time, and delete all private information from my browser on a regular basis) so I have no idea where it’s getting this information from as “relevant”. So military.com, blackpeople.com, Gay Boy, so on and so forth, Road Runner is telling me this is relevant to www.annenbergonlinecommunitiess.com???? Seriously now… that’s ridiculous!

I guess what really irks me is the fact that something so simple as an error message has transformed into an ISPs attempt monetize its users’ mistakes. Yes, I can see how this may be helpful, but can they make it any more obvious what they are trying to do? I’d like to see an initial page explaining what the DNS redirection is doing before they actually do it. And what about giving the users the choice to opt-in or opt-out in the first DNS redirection.

What this all boils down to is net neutrality. We’ve seen users’ Google home pages hijacked by ISPs before which made some people mad. So how does this all relate to the privacy concerns of online communities? Well if you remember, Facebook released a very unpopular feature called beacon. It caused a major uproar for it’s privacy issues. Well long story short, Facebook eventually gave its users the ability to opt-out from using the feature. I’d say I’m definitely a big proponent for letting the user decide whether or not to use a particular feature. Additionally, I say we give the user the choice from the start, before the feature is even used or implemented (like the ISP’s DNS redirection, beacon, etc). Why not make it clear what is being offered as a “service” to those users who don’t understand all of this legal mumbo-jumbo. Yes I know I can turn of Time Warner Cable’s DNS redirection here and beacon as described here.

But can they just make it easy on a user, especially the moms and dads, the less tech-savvy, uninformed average Joe/Jane of the internet. So yes, we can opt-out, but we need to critically think about the options given to us by our online communities, and now, even our ISPs. Give me the option to choose, and give me an explanation that even my grandmother would be able to understand.