New.net

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New.net is a company that sells domains in alternate top-level domains not supported in the official DNS system, and publishes NewDotNet, an application that makes use of these domains. The top-level domains New.net provides include: .shop, .xxx, .club, .ltd, .inc, .travel, .tech, .sport, .family, .law, .med, and .mp3. Of these, .travel and possibly soon .xxx are in conflict with official TLDs later authorized by ICANN to be implemented by other registries. It should be noted that New.net's domains are not authentic TLDs, but are actually third level domains under the new.net domain name space (e.g., example.shop is really example.shop.new.net).

Several Internet Service Providers, such as Earthlink are compatible with New.net domains without any software being installed on the user's computer.[1]

[edit] Alleged Adware

New.net distributes NewDotNet, an Internet Explorer plugin for Windows that enables the browser to access sites that use these unofficial domain names. It is commonly considered adware or spyware. It can be installed by users intentionally, but is also quietly bundled in a number of apparently harmless programs, including Audiogalaxy, Babylon, BearShare, Go!Zilla, Grokster, iMesh, and KaZaA. Older versions of NewDotNet displayed unsolicited pop-up ads. Recent versions instead redirect search queries to the New.net search engine -- a common spyware behavior which permits the operators to mine search results. It is also considered a security risk because the update component downloads arbitrary code from the New.net server.

Several different versions of NewDotNet exist. Early versions installed themselves into the Windows directory as a DLL named "newdotnet" followed by a version number, and had no uninstall option. More recent versions create a folder in "c:\Program Files". A version introduced in 2002 (since discontinued) included a pop-up advertising component.

The program functions by inserting itself into the Winsock system, which can in some situations disrupt network connectivity. A typical symptom for dial-up systems is that the user is able to dial out normally but cannot access the Internet. Nothing about an alternative DNS root requires the installation of new software, but one possible explanation for using a browser plug in would be to avoid running public recursive resolvers. New.net also have instructions for setting up your own recursive resolver to query new.net domains but they put these instructions in the ISP information section of their site.

Well-known and generally trusted anti-spyware programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot are usually effective at removing this software, however newer versions of Ad-Aware no longer remove it after a lawsuit was filed against Ad-Aware by New.net (New.net, Inc. v. Lavasoft, 356 F. Supp. 2d 1090, C.D. Cal. 2004). More recent versions of NewDotNet can be uninstalled using the standard Windows "Add/Remove Programs" control panel or an uninstaller in "C:\Program Files\New.net". Manual removal, if performed incorrectly, can completely disrupt the computer's ability to access the internet. This can be fixed with an LSP Fix program, available here.

[edit] Technical information

New.Net creates a DLL called newdotnetV_VV.dll (V_VV represents a version number). This DLL runs silently on start-up. All DNS entries pass through it. New.Net cannot be successfully uninstalled with standard Windows Add/Remove Programs tool. However, simply deleting the DLL causes the internet connection to be broken.