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Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

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Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. Contrary to popular belief, browsers on iOS aren’t all Safari skins. I know some people hate Apple for both good and bad reasons, but it's pretty wild to me people think Apple does this. I mean right out the gate that would be pretty illegal, no?

...what are you talking about? Every browser you use is forced by App Store policy to run off of the system WebView, which is Safari...other features being part of the browser doesn't change being forced into using that engine.

What are you talking about lol

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#142
post #126

Whitelist is a controversial / potentially offensive term, can it be changed please to allow list to make it inclusive please.

In the same way that "master recording" or "master branch" or "mastering" are somehow not inclusive?

You'd be surprised how many people get offended (usually on behalf of others) by this these days ...

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#145
post #71

Interesting that the list contains URLs to piracy torrent sites (thepiratebay, etc.) and the Silk Road darknet market (defunct since 2013).

The other .onions are Silk Road 3 (Created 2015) and the Hidden Wiki which Wikipedia eventually refused to link to.

These addresses are Onions v2 and now disabled in Tor.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you buy the domain and redirect them?

Periodically searching this list for purchasable domains seems like something scammers would be very very interested in. Honestly, apple should be making sure every one of these URLs goes to a live website and that the website is still exactly the website they intended it to be.

One of my old domains is on the list. It was a relatively popular blog years ago, once it expired it immediately got picked up by a spammer. This list is garbage.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#147

This is an interesting little example of how "systemic" happens, or can happen. The list exists initially to support a feature, a utilitarian reason. Then, being in the list has SEO value or some such. The list becomes a legitimacy or authority test. It affects traffic, sales. Maybe other stuff piggybacks this list. Anyone who needs a list of important domain names uses it. Ordering search results, caching, testing,…

Ok, maybe I am missing something here. The link points to a list Apple is hosting without any context. Does anyone know why this list is hosted and what it is used for? Is it even used? Edit: some 7 year old posts suggest it was used by Spotlight. I also am a little amazed it loaded and scrolls smooth on Firefox mobile...

When I type "analog.com" into the search bar, I can imagine a way for autocomplete to go wrong. This list would prevent it from going wrong.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Periodically searching this list for purchasable domains seems like something scammers would be very very interested in. Honestly, apple should be making sure every one of these URLs goes to a live website and that the website is still exactly the website they intended it to be.

> and that the website is still exactly the website they intended it to be. How could they realistically do that?

1: Whois every site on the list.

2: Did the owner information change since last time?

2n: No action required. Maybe select some sites randomly to have a human compare, but it's probably fine.

2y: Have a human check the site. Did it simply get purchased by another (similar) organization, or is it no longer relevant to its original purpose?

3: Do the needful.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#149

I'm curious to see how this changes over time, so I threw together a quick repo with a GitHub action to watch the endpoint. https://github.com/b0o/apple-autofill-domains

You should be careful with the cron intervals because GitHub eventually just disabled one of the actions that I wrote that worked exactly like this. I was generating a list of the YouTube's dynamic ad-serving domains.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I type “web.” it autocompletes to “web.archive.org”, I don’t think this list is up to date at all.

Probably stuff in your own history takes precedence?

Looks like it, my device autocompletes web. to web.whatsapp.com
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