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Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

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Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#21

Post by giancarlostoro »

101008 wrote: post #5
thangngoc89 wrote: post #2

Unrelated to the article but seeing .tk brings back many memories. As a kid without a bank account let's alone an international credit card (VISA/Mastercard), dot.tk is the only way to put a website online with your name. I created countless of websites with .tk for classmates, school and families.

Same here. .tk was the only one back then that allowed you to have your own domain name without subdomains. My memory is that: 1. freeserver.com/~userna 2. username.freeserver.com 3. username.fs.com 4. username.tk Then we grew up a bit and started paying domains :')

Im trying to remember I think it was 8m.com or something like that? Which also let you have stuff like username.8m.com its probably gone now.

I also miss tripod, not sure if its still around how it used to be. Angelfire comes to mind too.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#22

Post by samtho »

toddmorey wrote: post #16

I get .tk was popular because it was free and you do need a home for your website that’s portable across providers (not like a .netlify.app sub). But like we learned from .af, any of these TLDs technically meant for a country need to be considered ephemeral. You are sort of borrowing it without explicit (or lasting) permission.

> You are sort of borrowing it without explicit (or lasting) permission.

To be fair, this is true of all domains. The broader concern with ccTLDs is this borrowing dynamic layered with whatever geopolitical situation the country is in, how stable the administering authority is with respect to the current regime, or just the political forces at work within the country that may lead to changes or requirements for the ccTLD within the country are registered. There is often a concern of DNS infrastructure and local bandwidth considerations for the data center in which the root nameservers are housed, assuming they are not outsourcing that.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#23

Post by overstay8930 »

_mlbt wrote: post #10

Another prominent .tk domain is for the Tcl programming language (tcl.tk) and I just checked, that is one of the paid .tk domains that are still up.

Why do orgs feel the need to use these whacky TLDs

I’m still of the fence with rust using .rs in important places which is fundamentally in control of the Serbian government. You’re going to have to trust the Serbian government with signing .rs DNSSSEC at minimum and I don’t.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#24

Post by giancarlostoro »

captn3m0 wrote: post #3
thangngoc89 wrote: post #2

Unrelated to the article but seeing .tk brings back many memories. As a kid without a bank account let's alone an international credit card (VISA/Mastercard), dot.tk is the only way to put a website online with your name. I created countless of websites with .tk for classmates, school and families.

I used .co.nr alongside .tk for a while, before moving to .co.cc, and then finally managing a way to buy my domain.

I think I had co.nr too! I just dont remember if it was like .tk or if it was one of those webhosts.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#25

Post by kdmccormick »

bombcar wrote: post #17
_mlbt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree, I remember as a kid in the late 90s being able to host a website on one of the free hosting providers and then pairing it with a free domain name just made the whole thing that much more special. $10 or so a year for a paid domain name isn't a ton of money, but it can be for a kid with no credit cards and parents that aren't convinced as to why you "need" a domain name.

The problem is that "free for kids" is also "free for scammers" and it's hard to square that circle.

Would be really cool if public schools provided a free domain and basic hosting for any interested middle/high school student.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#26

Post by lolinder »

overstay8930 wrote: post #18

The people complaining that Cloudflare hosts these criminals would be the first ones complaining that Cloudflare has too much power when taking down websites it doesn’t like. You can’t win with these people, I personally think this is the best outcome and shows our systems work (albeit slowly). Sure it took a while, but now there doesn’t have to be a precedent of Cloudflare acting as the internet police more than it…

> You can’t win with these people

This is the classic fallacy of assuming that because you see comments of type A and comments of type B on the same forum that means they're the same people. They're usually not.

A more accurate way to phrase this is "you can't win with ... people". Whatever you do will end up ticking off some subset of the population.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#27

Post by gadders »

KomoD wrote: post #12
eszed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would follow that Cloudflare is tacitly admitting they have been / are hosting a large number of domains used for fraud and abuse. That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse. Anyone care to explain what I'm missing?

> That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse What time? What mitigations? Cloudflare will proxy anything and then tell you "we're just a proxy, so we wont do anything lol" when you report anything other than cf pages. Doesn't matter if it's terror groups, animal torture, piracy, doxing, far right groups, etc. I have personally submitted abuse reports and seen that absolutely no…

They've definitely refused to help far right sites and sites like Kiwi Farms.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#28

Post by moltar »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #21
101008 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. .tk was the only one back then that allowed you to have your own domain name without subdomains. My memory is that: 1. freeserver.com/~userna 2. username.freeserver.com 3. username.fs.com 4. username.tk Then we grew up a bit and started paying domains :')

Im trying to remember I think it was 8m.com or something like that? Which also let you have stuff like username.8m.com its probably gone now. I also miss tripod, not sure if its still around how it used to be. Angelfire comes to mind too.

Oh ya. I had my first website on 8m.com still available in the archives!! Best days!

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#29

Post by KomoD »

gadders wrote: post #27
KomoD wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That surprises me, given the time and effort they spend mitigating fraud and abuse What time? What mitigations? Cloudflare will proxy anything and then tell you "we're just a proxy, so we wont do anything lol" when you report anything other than cf pages. Doesn't matter if it's terror groups, animal torture, piracy, doxing, far right groups, etc. I have personally submitted abuse reports and seen that absolutely no…

They've definitely refused to help far right sites and sites like Kiwi Farms.

Yeah, because of the pressure after it all blew up. They even said in their own blog post that it was an "extraordinary" decision and did not believe terminating them was appropriate.

Kiwi Farms used their services for at least 6 years before anything happened.

Re: Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown

#30

Post by cube00 »

kdmccormick wrote: post #25
bombcar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "free for kids" is also "free for scammers" and it's hard to square that circle.

Would be really cool if public schools provided a free domain and basic hosting for any interested middle/high school student.

Good luck considering we can't even pay teachers properly.
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