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Government URLs that don't end in .gov
- sebmellen 3y agohttp://war-on-pineapple.com http://war-on-pineapple.com is purportedly owned by the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a dead link, unfortunately. What a curious domain! [0]: https://github.com/GSA/govt-urls/blob/main/2_govt_urls_federal_only.csv https://github.com/GSA/govt-urls/blob/main/2_govt_urls_feder...
- sebmellen 3y agoThe plot thickens. The former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency apparently dislikes pineapple on pizza: https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1154462806311235584 https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1154462806311235584.
- user__name 3y agoHere are all domains, extracted: 94 army as biz cc cfm ch cn co com com de Domain name edu gov gu helenapj htm info int io me mn mobi mp ms net nl online org org pr sc tips travel tv tw us vg vi wiki ws xyz
- ldehaan 3y ago[dead]
- the_svd_doctor 3y ago“annualcreditreport.com” is in the list but it’s not a government website. It’s run by a lovely alliance from equifax/transunion/experian, asking you to check the info they hold on you to avoid other people stealing money from banks.
- snowwrestler 3y agoIt’s run by that lovely alliance because U.S. federal law says that they must do so. Which is why it is on this list.
- cloudripper 3y agoInteresting to see both the Minnesota House of Representatives and State Senate using the ccTLD of Mongolia. [0] https://www.house.mn https://www.house.mn [1] https://www.senate.mn https://www.senate.mn
- TheFreim 3y agoHouse.mn redirects to https://www.house.mn.gov https://www.house.mn.gov
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- YPPH 3y agoVery odd indeed. In Australia, government departments almost always use .gov.au unless there are exceptional reasons. In the States, it is .[state].gov.au, eg .nsw.gov.au.
- seeknotfind 3y agoWe need a government root CA more than a government TLD. Domain names aren't even the only thing we should attest.
- zirgs 3y agoIt's unlikely for a scammer to get a gov domain.
- rileymat2 3y agoDefine unlikely? https://www.pcmag.com/news/its-now-a-bit-harder-to-register-a-gov-domain https://www.pcmag.com/news/its-now-a-bit-harder-to-register-... Because it was possible, maybe better now!
- Caligatio 3y agoThis sounds like a decent idea until you realize that means one of two options: - A US Government controlled CA root preinstalled on computers. Privacy advocates would be in arms. - Constant untrusted CA warnings when trying to access any government site.
- jowea 3y agoBrazil had trouble somewhat like that. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Abekkus 3y agoDoes our CA/browser infrastructure prevent the government from registering a trusted .gov CA instead of a trusted root CA?
- ComputerGuru 3y agoIt currently does, unless they get a cert cross-signed from a CA that’s in the root CA list. Which is a problem with the root cA design.
- KolmogorovComp 3y agoTitle should state "US Government..."
- Miner49er 3y agoIt's kind of implied, right? Since .gov is only for the US.
- Zetice 3y agoI’m surprised how many people here aren’t aware of this.
- msm_ 3y agoI'm aware of this. I'm just slightly offended by the title. None of my government's URLs end in a .gov. By not acknowledging this, the title ignores my country's existence. It's like I wrote a blog post "Government URLs that don't end in .gov.pl")
- Zetice 3y agoSuch is the US's reward for building out the nascent infrastructure of the early Internet. Also, this is a US centric site run by a US based company. The "American" part is implied unless explicitly stated otherwise.
- lol768 3y ago> Such is the US's reward for building out the nascent infrastructure of the early Internet. Like the world-wide-web we're all using to discuss this topic via? Oh, wait. > Also, this is a US centric site run by a US based company. The "American" part is implied unless explicitly stated otherwise. It is unfortunate that the point you are trying to express here has been worded in a way which does nothing but to reinforce stereotypes that Americans are arrogant and excessively nationalistic, since I'm sure that wasn't your intention. As dang has pointed out previously, Americans only make up about half of the audience here - and they may even be a minority today (this comment and the data referenced within it is a good 3 months old): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35464697
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rig666 3y agoA few years ago I was hired on at my local sheriff's department and I was so disappointed that we did not have a dot gov domain.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoYou could have gotten (them) one - it’s actually not an onerous process!
- graypegg 3y agoI’ve always thought it was weird that the Canadian federal government uses canada.ca almost exclusively. You see a lot of https://service-service.canada.ca/sign-up-sinscrire.aspx .ca is open for registration by anyone, and people are used to seeing that TLD. Combine that with the bilingual super long domain names and every once in a while you’ll see a phishing scam like: https://service-service-canada.ca/sign-up-sinscrire.aspx CIRA could set up a .gov.ca second level or something if they really wanted to keep the .ca, but I don’t think that will happen at this point. It’s at least consistant in looking like a phishing scam!
- TheGeminon 3y agoWe do have gc.ca, but I think it’s maybe legacy? https://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/tbsc-fsco/sc-hme.jsp?lang=eng https://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/tbsc-fsco/sc-hme.jsp?lang=en... works but servicecanada.gc.ca redirects to canada.ca
- Sanzig 3y ago.gc.ca exists for that exact purpose. It has the advantage of being bilingual ("GC" expands to both "Government of Canada" and "Gouvernement du Canada", .gov.ca omits the "u" in the French word gouvernement). I believe the canada.ca thing relates to the centralization of federal government IT under Shared Services Canada (SSC) in 2011. SSC is an attempt to make a "one stop shop" for government IT services, and Canada.ca is an extension of that philosophy to web presence. As an aside, SSC is very controversial in the Canadian federal government. They have a reputation for glacially slow delivery of services and inflexibility in IT policies. The head of StatCan actually resigned in 2016 in protest as a result of problems with SSC [1]. They have gotten better since then but it's still rocky. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-interview-wayne-smith-1.3769620 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-interview...
- graypegg 3y agoI completely forgot about gc.ca. I'm surprised they haven't kept with it! Didn't know about SCC, resigning over that is a pretty strong indicator of how the internals of the federal government's IT decision makers work haha.
- samwillis 3y agoI think it's particularly interesting that the US use .gov and not .gov.us (as a Brit). I'm sure there are oversights on who can acquire an inherently international .gov domain, but for example here in the UK .gov.uk domains have a strict application process [0] managed by central government. It just seems to me that it would be more secure, and more reassuring to citizens and visitors that they are on the correct site it's under a cctld that's clearly affiliated to and managed by that government. 0: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-and-manage-a-gov-uk-domain-name https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-and-manage-a-gov-uk-domain-name -- Edit: turns out .gov is exclusively for the US, not sure I feel good about that, particularly as .com and .net are very much not just for the US. The possibility of the US government creating a .gov specifically to confuse uses in a foreign country isn't ideal. I get it, you invented the internet, but the special status you have over it is a little frustrating. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/M-23-10-DOTGOV-Act-Guidance.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/M-23-1...
- mozman 3y agoFun fact: I briefly had a .gov domain in the early 90s through internic until they figured out I was not a government agency
- 0xE1337DAD 3y ago.mil too
- tnel77 3y ago>>I get it, you invented the internet, but the special status you have over it is a little frustrating. america music intensifies
- dmatech 3y agoInterestingly, .edu is mostly only for US universities, but there are a bunch of exceptions. Basically, there used to be several "generic TLDs"[1] in addition to the "country code TLDs" (of which ".su" for Soviet Union still exists), but they mostly got converted into sponsored TLDs. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain
- remram 3y agoI got an official email from New York State's Office Of The Comptroller with a link to osc.state.ny.us. It came from an email address @osc.ny.gov. I don't understand why they couldn't use an official TLD in the URL too.
- bobthepanda 3y ago.nyc is also a government TLD.
- remram 3y agoNot true, see https://www.ownit.nyc/ https://www.ownit.nyc/
- pc86 3y agoI used to do contracting work for a state government agency (that also owned the .gov and .us domains), and they had rules about what could be hosted on .gov vs. .us that were sufficiently restrictive that I was told on the first day that we only ever deploy things to .us. Perhaps something similar exists for NY, and/or that "rule" was actually federal?
- Abekkus 3y agoI saw a similar problem at dhs. The contractors who run email & office software don’t talk with the contractors who run their web presence, on two completely separate domains. Lots of US gov orgs use way too many contracts instead of staff.
- toast0 3y agostate.$STATE.us is an official domain, too. In the before times, .gov was intended for the US Federal government, and states were expected to use space within .us. It got rather messy when the Feds started letting states get delegations under .gov and .us was opened to registration of second level domains and new multilevel delegates became discouraged or disallowed.
- remram 3y ago
- vladharbuz 3y agoAlways found it arbitrary that .gov is only for use by the US.
- pc86 3y agoHad another country had a primary role in inventing the internet, they would probably have it (or more likely, the US would be .gov.us and everyone else would be whatever they are today).
- vladharbuz 3y agoI don’t understand this argument. Are you saying the internet should be organised in a way that benefits the US, even if it is confusing for people in other countries? By your reasoning, it would make sense for .com to be US-exclusive because the US had a primary role in inventing the internet. Let’s pause to ask ourselves “what is an actually good system?” instead of “how can we justify US privilege?”.
- pc86 3y agoI'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that's what led to where we are today.
- vladharbuz 3y agoThat’s fair, sorry, I read too much into what you were saying!
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoThe question isn't really "is this a good system", it's "is this a bad enough system that it's worth spending billions of dollars to change".
- kanbara 3y agoCERN / Switzerland would like a word
- xwdv 3y agoIt’d be more interesting to see a list of sites that end in .gov but aren’t government associated. I feel like the creation of such a site would involve some inside connections and shady backroom deals.
- dudeinjapan 3y agoSo every time the FBI/CIA sets up a domain for a sting operation it has to be listed here? Seems like an Achilles' heel, no?
- pc86 3y agoWhat says it has to be listed here?
- dudeinjapan 3y agohttps://search.gov/about/policy/govt-urls.html https://search.gov/about/policy/govt-urls.html "Federal executive branch agencies must ensure their non-.gov or .mil domains are on the list." Also on this page, there is an "out of scope" list which only includes 4 things: SaaS, cloud resources, SNS sites, and code repos. I take the govt at its word--it has never lied before--so naturally covert ops must be "in-scope".
- pc86 3y ago> In Comments > ... Don't be snarky. ... Edit out swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dudeinjapan 3y agoIn the words of the great philosopher Popeye: "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam."
- calgarymicro 3y ago> This repo contains USA.gov's list of public government domains and URLs that don't end in .gov or .mil. Definitely not.
- topkai22 3y agoBriefly scrolling through the the list for really weird ones and “ war-on-pineapple.com” jumped out at me. Turns out it’s not a USDA campaign, but is associated with a CISA campaign to explain foreign influence operations focused on divisiveness. CISA produced a quite good one pager: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_1008_cisa_the-war-on-pineapple-understanding-foreign-interference-in-5-steps.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_100... Sadly the domain is inactive, but they helpfully included an archive.org to show some of the additional content (how the CISA director executed a pineapple op on Twitter): https://web.archive.org/web/20190726194709/https:/twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1154462806311235584 https://web.archive.org/web/20190726194709/https:/twitter.co... And for the record- pepperoni pineapple jalapeño pizza is delicious.
- gr33nq 3y agoI went through the process of registering a .gov domain recently and it definitely takes a couple of months. It requires a letter of intent, wet signatures from elected official(s) on official letterhead, a phone call to a publicly listed number of an elected official, 2FA enrollment for the management of DNS/WHOIS, and a period of time in between some of these steps for some behind-the-scenes verification to take place. Despite the many steps, I did find it relatively straightforward and appropriate given the exclusivity of the TLD. In fact, the most difficult part (that I'm still working through) is convincing management that we should make the full migration to the .gov now that we have it registered...
- xmprt 3y agoWhat type of organization are you operating where you'd need a .gov? Is this a government organization (like a local government or city hall)? Or is it possible for even random non-government related non-profits to have legitimate uses for .govs? Edit: I was mostly commenting on this. > In fact, the most difficult part is convincing management that we should make the full migration to the .gov It sounds like the most difficult part of getting a .gov is having a legitimate government entity and having a purpose that needs one.
- smeyer 3y agoI would hope that random "non-government related non-profits" aren't using .gov domains. Isn't the whole point of the domain that it's just for government entities?
- bombcar 3y agoeven usps.gov just redirects to usps.com which I feel is a bit of a loss. Lots of small towns have dot coms when they could have dot gov.
- asperous 3y agoUSPS I think from a branding perspectives wants to be compared to retail shipping and not come across and some stuffy/slow bureaucratic agency, even though they totally are.
- captn3m0 3y agoInteresting related thing from India: the official TLDs as per the guidelines are .gov.in and .nic.in, and both are registered as a public suffix (legacy, from when the list was created). However the government created a separate Section 8 company called Digital India corporation that runs a separate group of websites for Citizen Outreach called MyGov, which runs a separate subdomain for these: mygov.in. Unfortunately, they haven’t gotten around to registering it as a public suffix, so there are concerns around security (cookies are shared between completely separate sites). The public suffix list doesn’t accept contributions without authorisation anymore, so it’s unlikely to be fixed. There’s also the interesting case of some government sites preferring .org.in to showcase independence from government interference- RBI, for eg (the central bank) runs at rbi.org.in. I wrote a few more findings when I created a list back in 2020: https://twitter.com/captn3m0/status/1301613472615030784 https://twitter.com/captn3m0/status/1301613472615030784
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoI'm seeing only the one tweet, not the intended thread. Is this another artefact of Twitter being broken?
- captn3m0 3y agoTwitter no longer seems to render threads without login
- nodesocket 3y agotva.com. That's gotta be worth some money now.
- xn--cr8h 3y agoSort of funny that the README never mentions which government they're talking about. Classic USA trying to make sure everyone knows they're the most important country in the history of planet Earth
- tamimio 3y agoSame here, it took me few seconds to realize it was a US only. Usually this is the mindset of “Murricans”, on the internet or otherwise, where sometimes you ask someone “where are you from?” And they proceed to mention the state or worse, the state nickname/short name as if you are living in US, it’s hilarious when they are meeting with people who aren’t in the Americas continent at all :)
- rootusrootus 3y agoI've met a fair number of people internationally and I could probably count on one hand how many of them didn't know that Oregon was a US state. It could just be that I'm meeting with more educated folks, granted.
- tamimio 3y agoYou might argue that, but the point isn’t about the receiver/listener side, but rather the speaker, obviously knowing where X will be about that person knowledge in geography, but for the speaker to assume that everyone you are talking to as if they are living in the same country as him/her, imagine you are talking to someone from .. say Thailand, and instead of mentioning the country, they say they from Phayao -a province name, of course, if you happen to be knowledgeable in that region geography or visited before you might know, but it’s still a communication hurdle to assume everyone will.
- nobody9999 3y ago>you ask someone “where are you from?” Generally, I'll answer with "The place so nice, they named it twice."[0] [0] I wasn't sure if I wanted to include an actual reference to define that, but here you go[1]. [1] https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/new_york_new_york_so_nice_they_named_it_twice https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/new... Edit: Fixed typo.
- eduction 3y ago[makes an authoritative list of non gov federal sites so you know you can trust them even though they’re not at dot gov] [puts that list at a non dot gov website]
- ulrischa 3y agoGov is a horrible because it is exclusively for US. It would be better if all governmental intitutions in the world could have a gov domain. Much better trust and verification
- debugnik 3y agoThe word for government in most languages doesn't start with gov-, so no thanks. I'd personally suggest the opposite, the US switching to .gov.us and .edu.us, but consensus in this thread seems to be that "everyone" already knows those are US-only anyway, where "everyone" of course means Americans; even "too late to change" is a better argument than that, IMO.
- SeanLuke 3y agoMy favorite is definitely Smithsonian. They're very, very proud that they are si.edu.
- syncsynchalt 3y agoThe most egregious of these to me is moneyfactory.com (the Bureau of Engraving & Printing). It reads as very low-rent considering it's the printing press of the US Dollar. If they reached out to me I'd think it was a weak scam.
- tamimio 3y ago[flagged]
- CameronNemo 3y agoApparently they also have moneyfactory.gov
- rootusrootus 3y agoThe Bureau of Engraving and Printing just produces paper. Pretty paper that looks a lot like US dollars, but isn't in fact US dollars until the Federal Reserve Bank takes possession and issues it. In any case, moneyfactory.com is just a redirect to bep.gov, so I'm not sure what the big deal is. The average person's interaction with the BEP, aside from handling paper money, is probably at their gift shop. Having a cutesy name probably made sense at some level.
- syncsynchalt 3y agoIt redirects to bep.gov now, but a decade+ ago it was their preferred URL. You can still find the URL in older press releases on treasury.gov, other US government sites, and older news sites, and all I meant is that it reads very a little naïve and "off brand" to me these as a modern reader: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/20035137475911137 https://money.cnn.com/2003/09/16/pf/banking/marketing_new_money/index.htm https://www.dailynebraskan.com/local-businesses-prepare-for-new-20-bill/article_6a2ea77f-60e4-52aa-8217-731a6cdf9114.html
- cobalt 3y agoIt might be parked to prevent scams
- brown 3y agoMy favorite URL oddity has to be "id.me" for U.S. Citizen identity services. Seems a bit odd to use a Montenegro domain, doesn't it?
- abeyer 3y agoThere was another one (census, maybe? can't recall which agency it was) using a .gd for a while, too... don't see it on the list anymore. Not sure who signed off on putting government services behind the "control" of a country we've invaded before.
- ehPReth 3y agoIt seems to be run by a third-party company that the government latched on to for some reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID.me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID.me
- bob-09 3y agoNothing out of the ordinary for individual government departments to turn to private contractors when the GSA doesn't offer them a service they need when they need it. GSA has since developed login.gov, but there hasn't been a mandate that other agencies have to use it over third-parties.
- ehPReth 3y agoAh I see! Hope there's one soon