Re: www.wpad.net

[TheGesus <thegesus () gmail com>]

On 2/21/06, Prabhat Sharma <hi.prabhat () gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does anybody's machine also tries to access www.wpad.net. I use dial up to
> connect to internet and the moment I connect to internet my firewall shows
> that svchost is trying to access www.wpad.net. I tried visiting www.wpad.net
> website and the owner of the site says that it is due to some microsoft bug
> related to Web Proxy Discovery Protocol (WPAD).
>
> There is also a link (which I also found in other places after some
> googling) of a wpad (Web Proxy Auto Discovery Protocol) draft which is
> drafted by microsoft (That is what the website says).
>
> Has anyone else faced this issue or my machine has some unwanted material.

Actually, wpad was invented by Netscape, but screwed up by MS.

"wpad." without an extension is something like the 6th or 7th most
common illegal DNS lookup.

If you deselect "Automatic Discovery" in IE that should put an end to it.

That fellow who owns the domain names could do some pretty nasty stuff
if he ever decided to turn evil.
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