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"Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites ha

"Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens." No they don't. The same problem exists with subdomains, for example some users may visit "netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com" and not notice the issue. Meanwhile, using a weird TLD can raise suspicion even for legitimate sites. Get a dot com.

Volundr 6y ago
netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com isn't really the same though. If I own netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, I can create facebook.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, google.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, etc simply by creating new DNS records. No one but myself is involved, or even know they exist (unless I put links to them somewhere public). On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Let me explain. The problem is that somebody malicious might impersonate another company through a domain name. So they send people emails with URLs like "netflix.user-support.com" where "user-support.com" is owned by the malicious actor. This is extremely common. I honestly don't see any other problem. How else would you get people to visit "netflix.soy", if not by the same mechanism? It doesn't matter who controls which part of the domain, users are either going to notice the odd parts of the domain, or they are not. The fact that one is a TLD and the other isn't doesn't really make a difference, at least for uncommon TLDs. > On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations. Yes, but that wouldn't do anything to solve the problem. It would only make things more expensive. I honestly don't see the issue with anybody owning "netflix.soy" unless they're malicious, but in that case owning "netflix.anything-else.com" would be just as bad, if not worse. Since we can't really prevent the latter case, preventing the former case is moot.

Volundr 6y ago

netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com isn't really the same though. If I own netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, I can create facebook.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, google.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, etc simply by creating new DNS records. No one but myself is involved, or even know they exist (unless I put links to them somewhere public). On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.

gridlockd 6y ago
Let me explain. The problem is that somebody malicious might impersonate another company through a domain name. So they send people emails with URLs like "netflix.user-support.com" where "user-support.com" is owned by the malicious actor. This is extremely common. I honestly don't see any other problem. How else would you get people to visit "netflix.soy", if not by the same mechanism? It doesn't matter who controls which part of the domain, users are either going to notice the odd parts of the domain, or they are not. The fact that one is a TLD and the other isn't doesn't really make a difference, at least for uncommon TLDs. > On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations. Yes, but that wouldn't do anything to solve the problem. It would only make things more expensive. I honestly don't see the issue with anybody owning "netflix.soy" unless they're malicious, but in that case owning "netflix.anything-else.com" would be just as bad, if not worse. Since we can't really prevent the latter case, preventing the former case is moot.