before we deployed root-delegation-only here, i was also annoyed that my e-mail tool could not tell me about misspelled domain names at "send" time and i had to wait for the wildcard mail servers to bounce the traffic.

In other words, Verisign is actually increasing the amount of misspelled domain name traffic by sabotaging the spell-checking feature of your email program. Under normal circumstances you would have noticed your error and corrected it before sending the email. This implies that Verisign could be collecting a much larger number of valid email addresses by logging these seemingly misspelled domain names and then "correcting" the misspelling by closest match against the .COM database. This would be an immensely valuable list for spammers to acquire, whether they do it by paying Verisign or by infiltrating the company to steal it. And don't pay any attention to Matt Larson's comments regarding logging. If he is unable to shut off the wildcard redirection then he has no say over what data is collected and what is done with it. Verisign could easily reassign him with a promotion and then turn on the logging and collection of email addresses. We already know that this company is unscrupulous and not to be trusted. In future we need to ensure that the registry operating the .COM domain works under some sort of contract that controls how they function. This is a public resource that we ourselves have created and not a commercial asset to be milked for profit. --Michael Dillon