I was browsing the web, when I was suddenly stupified with a Qwest message in my web browser. Yes, I am a Qwest subscriber, but I (purposely) didn’t install any of their software. Apparently, when an internet request can’t be resolved (the domain doesn’t exist), Qwest wants to hijack the traffic and display ‘custom’ alternatives provided by Yahoo Search. It essentially destroyed any built-in browser behavior. Both IE8 and Firefox give their own ‘custom search results’ for mistyped (or search) urls, why add the ISP to this mix as well?

This is completely preposterous — think of the implications this would have, both on the user experience and on automated scripts. I was completely confused when I reached this — I was browsing the Google App Engine apps, and clicked on a mis-linked app, and was all of a sudden on a Qwest page.

The good news is: there is an opt out. Unfortunately, it’s hidden several layers deep in the UI. I recommend if you see this error message, you call Qwest and express to them your disapproval of this ‘service’.

See the image for the search page after I had ‘opted out’, and the request was pending (which having that, in itself, is pretty lame)

dis-service, greedy, Qwest, Web.Help