I have always thought the infinite proliferation of TLDs was a stupid idea. I'd be enlightened if I could think of one scenario that benefits from it outside of the registrars.
DNS should be a destination, not a utility. Every John Smith has a legitimate claim on smith.com. DNS should offer disambiguation services. Instead, we have this awful system. My dream is to fork a browser and replace the DNS component with an entirely new protocol that respects the notion that people in the real world share names.
Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
71–80 of 220 posts
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#72I wonder if part of the "business model" behind the ever-growing gTLD list is that all the companies with well-known brands essentially have to also register their brand under the new TLD as well if they don't want to risk it being taken by criminals or competitors.
Why only make money once by selling apple.com if you can also sell apple.biz, apple.xyz, apple.froom etc ad infinitum?
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people who would fall for that would probably also fall for `dell.computerdealshop.com` though
When a scam hits someone's inbox or text message, it finds them in a particular time in their life, in a particular state of mind, and in a particular context. It's not just about how gullible or uninformed or whatever they are. They may be tired, they may be drunk, they may be spending all their energy worrying about a sick relative, or trying not to. They may have just been shopping for a computer, maybe even a del…
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Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#74Dunno why he had to single out those 3 TLDs in his title. Doesn't really matter that they're the most registered, there's soooo many TLDs now and all equally susceptible to phishing use because users aren't looking closely enough (nor should they really? nobody even knows what a browser is vs 'the internet') or there's no way for anyone to know what's official etc. We needed more TLDs in general, this is just a side effect of the scale.
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a web page with a picture of a turkey sitting on a pig? Not squatting GPT/Cursor will create that page for you in 5 min. I bet a NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2.
NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2. That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains, if they have to suddenly have to pay $20,000 to $50,000 for the not squatting service.
>That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains
There's no way static site hosting and a email service costs $2-$5 per year per domain, especially for bulk users. Even if we take that price at face value, a .com domain already costs around $10/year. A 20%-50% increase will only change behavior at the margins. It won't make chat.com magically become available, and at best will make some D tier domains available. Ironically the introduction of gTLDs probably had the same effect. Squatting harrisonburgrealty.com is suddenly going to be less profitable when there's harrisonburg.{realty,realestate,realtor,homes,house,place,properties,rent,apartments} available as well.
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#76> new gTLDs introduced in the last few years command just 11 percent of the market for new domains, but accounted for roughly 37 percent of cybercrime domains reported between September 2023 and August 2024. > .com and .net domains made up approximately half of all domains registered...they accounted for just over 40 percent of all cybercrime domains. Hardly earth shattering. .net and .com are still pulling 80% of th…
.net and .com are still pulling 80% of their weight when it comes to cybercrime. The article states it's half that. "while .com and .net domains made up approximately half of all domains registered in the past year… they accounted for just over 40 percent of all cybercrime domains. Interisle says an almost equal share — 37 percent — of cybercrime domains were registered through new gTLDs."
> The article states it's half that.
No, the article agrees with dmurray. Read again: 80% of 50% is 40%.
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#77I wonder if part of the "business model" behind the ever-growing gTLD list is that all the companies with well-known brands essentially have to also register their brand under the new TLD as well if they don't want to risk it being taken by criminals or competitors. Why only make money once by selling apple.com if you can also sell apple.biz, apple.xyz, apple.froom etc ad infinitum?
Ultimately every trademark/company has to buy all the domains under their soon to be gTLDed trademark/company.
apple.* takes time to gather revenue. *.apple gathers an infinite amount of money quicker.
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#78The whole environment of the newer gTLDs just feels… gross. I rarely find a reputable business that is using anything but .com or .co.XX as the primary domain. Putting on my regular-person hat: When I see a billboard or print ad with e.g. `example.travel`, I read that as a social media handle and not a website address like `example.com` would convey. In public perception, dot com means websites. Always has. (Tangenti…
> I rarely find a reputable business that is using anything but .com or .co.XX as the primary domain
What about all the other ccTLDs? Okay, maybe not .ly, .by, .ru and friends, but what do you have against .it, .fr, .de, es?
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There are lots of people called John Smith. They all want a domain name. There's only so many variations of jsmith, j-smith, etc you can squeeze into .com, .net, and a few others. >Why shouldn't they be able to buy a domain name which contains their name? I fail to see how johnsmith[insert number here].com is any worse than johnsmith.[insert TLD here]. If anything a number is less likely to get mixed up than tlds, w…
Surely the number 14 is likely to get misheard as 40. And 13135432 is easily typo'd to 13134532.
It's not about typos or mishearing stuff, it's about words being jumbled in memory. Unlike a sequence of digits, people don't store words "engineering" in their head as a string (eg. "E-N-G-I-N-E-E-R-I-N-G"). It's stored as something like "[concept of engineer] + [present participle]". That's far more likely to get jumbled in people's head during recall.
Re: Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people who would fall for that would probably also fall for `dell.computerdealshop.com` though
When a scam hits someone's inbox or text message, it finds them in a particular time in their life, in a particular state of mind, and in a particular context. It's not just about how gullible or uninformed or whatever they are. They may be tired, they may be drunk, they may be spending all their energy worrying about a sick relative, or trying not to. They may have just been shopping for a computer, maybe even a del…
Whether people are more easily fooled by dell.shop dell.computershop.com is a non sequitur from the rather wordy disquisition about why people fall for the scams in general. The eye sees dell first in clear letters for both urls. Their sick relative doesn’t change much here. I would honestly not be sure if either is a scam for the url alone. The improbable deal at the other end is the only meaningful signal.