Re: OT: Strange behavior in Firefox -- google searches start by searching another URL / domain
On Mon, 7 Jun 2021 18:11:13 -0400
Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 06:08:39PM -0400, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> > Thanks for the reply -- not quite, comments interspersed below:
> >
> > On Monday, June 07, 2021 04:38:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:28:03PM -0400, rhkramer@gmail.com
> > > wrote:
> > > > time) when I go to do a google search, the little message down
> > > > in the lower left corner of the screen that typically gives
> > > > messages like (paraphrased): ~"waiting for google.com" or
> > > > "loading data from google.com" (with variations on the URL)
> > > > sometimes starts with a completely irrelevant URL (but one that
> > > > I recognize and that concerns me).
> > >
> > > Let's make sure we understand each other completely here. I
> > > believe what you are doing is:
> > >
> > > 1) Open firefox. It has a default or nearly-default
> > > configuration.
> > >
> > > 2) Go to www.google.com.
> > >
> > > 3) Search for something. Doesn't matter what.
> >
> > What I see is happening while the google search result page is
> > "populating" (or actually waiting for it to start populating), the
> > first thing I see (sometimes) is something like ~"waiting for
> > buckslib.org"
>
> It might be firefox pre-fetching pages (or at least verifying they're
> actually reachable). Beyond that, I don't know.
>
Though Google always heads the list of The Usual Suspects, ISPs can also
be involved in dodgy behaviours. I remember once investigating a
curious behaviour, where a client was sometimes shown the kind of page
he was looking for, but not the one he'd asked for.
It turned out that the ISP's DNS server, on failing to get a reply to a
query, instead of telling the user this, would return another company's
IP address. Presumably this based on a database of companies and their
products and who had paid them for this service. I'm afraid this rather
offended me, and I switched the client's DNS server to operating from
root hints.
Apparently the service company that did this still exists (this was at
least ten years ago, a lifetime on the Net), and is called bare fruit
(all one word) for anyone wanting to see a company that boasts about DNS
hijacking.
--
Joe
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