But why would anybody want to do that? It's because the domain name they're displaying is more trustworthy than the one they're actually directing you to. So yo

But why would anybody want to do that? It's because the domain name they're displaying is more trustworthy than the one they're actually directing you to. So you gotta ask: How hard should we work to defend the trustworthiness of domain names? The author thinks we should work harder. Names are notoriously a weak spot when it comes to software. So many attacks converge on tampering with the referential integrity of names. It has been a problem for decades. Trust, by contrast, is a deeply human thing. We have been deciding who to trust and who not to for millennia. Those instincts though, they don't work for domain names. They work for humans, and a domain name is a lousy proxy for a trustworthy human. So these "vanity URLs", or "link fraud" as the author puts it, are a reminder that defending the trustworthiness of a domain name is a rather awkward position to be in. And I'm proposing that we find a different position to defend, rather than digging in where we are.