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Government URLs that don't end in .gov

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171–180 of 202 posts

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#171

“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.

It’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.

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#172
post #58

I 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 si…

.com and .net and .org are only "internationally available" because the registrars didn't care to restrict them (IIRC, one of them was moderately restrictive in the beginning, perhaps .org requiring an actual organization of some sort). .mil is also US only. The real hotness is to host on .arpa - https://blog.fhrnet.eu/2019/03/13/fun-with-arpa-domains/

The TLD .org was originally for non-profits, to distinguish them from the for-profit companies found over at the .com TLD. In the beginning, you had to prove nonprofit status to get a .org domain.

That’s no longer required, but still there was a big fight a few years ago when the .org registrar was set to be sold to a private equity firm. It’s the TLD of choice for nonprofits, as an echo of that early restriction.

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#173
post #112
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ccTLDs are not affiliated in anyway with ICANN ccTLDs delegations are managed by IANA, who are owned by ICANN

While its true there is still a relationship back to ICANN for ccTLDs, politically it would be a shitstorm of epic proportions if the US/ICANN interfered in the administration of ccTLDs - most countries (understandably!) see their ccTLD as an increasingly sovereign thing that is naturally owned by the State, not the registrars or domain name registration system. While it might be technically possible for ICANN to mak…

ICANN hasn't even managed to get rid of the .SU ccTLD.

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be specific though: .gov is available for any government within these United States, whether it be federal, state, local municipality, territorial, or tribal government. In fact, all major cities I just spot-checked have .gov domains. I wonder how many are clinging to . .us? At least as a CNAME? ...none of those which I just spot-checked. Plenty of exceptions abound, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.gov#U…

I remember back in the day when the highschool website & email was: school.district.k12.ca.us . Basically no one uses those because they were too long and hard to remember. My old school district doesn't use the higher level, the school doesn't use the full name. In fact, they don't even resolve in DNS anymore. Some districts now have the schools under their new domain, some schools do their own thing.

I never had a problem remembering such domains, because I found them logical. In fact, in 1996, I registered such a domain that was ...us. I figured this was the most accessible one for all four of our roommates to use, and there was no cost at the time.

Come to find out that the k12.ca.us. domain is completely defunct! There is no SOA for it, and WHOIS indicates it's inactive. k12.ny.us. seems to be in the same condition. However, there are still k12..us. domains in other parts of these USA. If you search for them, you can find websites and email addresses under that hierarchy.

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#175
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be specific though: .gov is available for any government within these United States, whether it be federal, state, local municipality, territorial, or tribal government. In fact, all major cities I just spot-checked have .gov domains. I wonder how many are clinging to . .us? At least as a CNAME? ...none of those which I just spot-checked. Plenty of exceptions abound, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.gov#U…

The MBTA (transit authority) in MA in the US uses .com. (MA state government seemingly still uses .ma.us as well. And town.ma.us seems pretty standard in MA at least based on my town.

What are the chances that Art Spiegelman could register a clever "ma.us" domain?

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#176
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Country calling codes date from the 60s and yet the US (and Canada?) are still +1. The real answer is that it’s way too much work to change now for essentially no benefit, so it will probably continue indefinitely unless a new system supplants the current internet.

That's silly; registering new domain names and putting redirects in place is much simpler than changing a freakin' country code.

[deleted]

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember back in the day when the highschool website & email was: school.district.k12.ca.us . Basically no one uses those because they were too long and hard to remember. My old school district doesn't use the higher level, the school doesn't use the full name. In fact, they don't even resolve in DNS anymore. Some districts now have the schools under their new domain, some schools do their own thing.

I never had a problem remembering such domains, because I found them logical. In fact, in 1996, I registered such a domain that was . . .us. I figured this was the most accessible one for all four of our roommates to use, and there was no cost at the time. Come to find out that the k12.ca.us. domain is completely defunct! There is no SOA for it, and WHOIS indicates it's inactive. k12.ny.us. seems to be in the same co…

There are still plenty of subdomains, for example, https://www.cnusd.k12.ca.us/

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#178
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of implied, right? Since .gov is only for the US.

I’m surprised how many people here aren’t aware of this.

I'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")

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#179
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the state of the root ca bundle? As far as I can tell it has every national CA except the US. Do you really trust the turkish government with the ability to sign for any domain. Some days I consider tearing out the whole thing and rebuilding with the 3 CA's I actually care about. but then I usually give up as too much hassle.

> Do you really trust the turkish government with the ability to sign for any domain. No, but I don’t have to. To be included in the root CA list, they have to participate in cert transparency logging. So I can just pick a log to monitor, and check to make sure they haven’t issued a cert for one of my domains.

So you don't trust them to not issue an unexpected cert but you do trust them to always log it?

edit: I just read the spec. the cert needs to be logged to be considered valid by the browser. which has fun connotations where google is effectively monitoring everything you access. basically the mother of all analytics. well... I mean... that is.. if they were not already monitoring everything you do on the web. so it's ok I guess.

Re: Government URLs that don't end in .gov

#180
post #89

I 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 si…

The UK doesn't put the country of origin on their postage stamps, because they invented them [1], so there were no ambiguities to lift. That's the same reason the US is +1 country code and holds .gov [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_hist...

Also the same reason, I guess, English-speaking countries have 0 and 1 as country codes in ISBN numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISBN_registration_grou...

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