Hello Darren and List, This feature is known as "Autosearch". Even a cursory search for details on it through Microsoft's site or Google would have returned this knowledge base article (Q221754): http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q221754 The article details how it works, why they have it, and how to configure it. If you want to disable its pretty simple: open the search paine in IE, click the 'Customize' button, click click the 'Autosearch' button and choose 'Do Not Search from the Address bar'. This will eliminate the traffic. You can confirm this by using snort or any decent personal firewall. Many people (especially newbies) find this feature very handy. Additionally, you can configure this handy feature to go to your favorite search engine. --dan heskett www.danheskett.com -----Original Message----- From: Darren Reed [mailto:avalonat_private] Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 7:42 PM To: bugtraqat_private Subject: Mistype a URL? M$N knows what you typed. If you've ever used IE and typed in "ww.foo.com" into the path, you will end up at a web page generated by an MSN web site. How did I get this, you ask? Well, you definately cannot find anything in the "Internet Options" panels which lets you configure this. If you fire up regedit, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search you will find "CustomizeSearch" and "SearchAssistant". Unless you want all of the URLs which fail to resolve in domain names to be handed off to MSN. Furthermore, there are cookies involved with these web sites. These "helpers" appear to only be used when there are no proxies enabled but it would be a nice if there was an easier way to stop Microsoft knowing every bad URL that gets typed, etc, by those with no proxy. FWIW, for me CustomizeSearch defaults to: http://ie.search.msn.com/{SUB_RFC1766}/srchasst/srchcust.htm and SearchAssistant to: http://ie.search.msn.com/{SUB_RFC1766}/srchasst/srchasst.htm Darren
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