I remember when it was easy to get edus. Recall someone who had irc.edu until they got caught.
It was easy to get all sorts of fun domains back in the day. All so you could have lolz in your irc /whois.
It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
101–110 of 184 posts
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you mean, but I suspect the author might be referring to the Russian disinformation campaign to favour Republicans. I see it just as an example - obviously it can be adapted in either direction, or both just to deter voter participation altogether.
It would be shocking, though, if it turned out that Russia was the only country trying to influence US elections, though, instead of the only one that has been publically exposed.
Yet, with an exception of Iran, the countries with most aggressive foreign policies (Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) seem to currently support the election of Republican nominees.
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Norway, people employed by the local municipalities have email adresses that are literally of the style $firstname[.$middlename].$lastname@employee.$municipalityName.municipality.no where "employee" and "municipality" are literal strings (in Norwegian) and the others are variables. It's incredible, I've seen people with 50 character long email addresses.
Why is that incredible? It is pretty common for many institutions to have that kind of email. Universities for instance often have similar emails so that just by looking at the email you know if the person is a teacher / student / temp worker and which chair they belong to, sometimes which campus in addition. Many big companies have similar things to identify the BU of the email holder or indicate a contractor status…
I don't know, I guess in the industries I work it's much more common to have emails that are somewhat unpredictable, like mide54@corp.com
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a TLD for NYC. It is, expectedly, not used for the city's official website. I guess people don't know how to visit TLDs in their browser. (I believe it would be "nyc.")
That's not how .nyc is used or is expected to be used. It's a top-level domain, not a dotless host name. Here's an example of how it's used: https://thecity.nyc/
https://nyc.nyc, so good they domain named it twice...
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you mean, but I suspect the author might be referring to the Russian disinformation campaign to favour Republicans. I see it just as an example - obviously it can be adapted in either direction, or both just to deter voter participation altogether.
It would be shocking, though, if it turned out that Russia was the only country trying to influence US elections, though, instead of the only one that has been publically exposed.
I think many countries assessed that they were capable of it, but many would think this was a casus belli. Had Clinton been elected instead, she probably would have sought additional sanctions and a firmer stance against Russia because of this.
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#106Good reporting, until this paragraph: Now consider what a well-funded adversary could do on Election Day armed with a handful of .gov domains for some major cities in Democrat strongholds within key swing states: The attackers register their domains a few days in advance of the election, and then on Election Day send out emails signed by .gov from, say, miami.gov (also still available) informing residents that bombs…
One of the major political parties in the US has been repeatedly engaging in voter suppression. Is it partisan to observe repeated behavior on one side of the political spectrum, and to extrapolate accordingly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...
For the rest of the world, voting without proper documents screams voting fraud. It's not that black and white.
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#107Good reporting, until this paragraph: Now consider what a well-funded adversary could do on Election Day armed with a handful of .gov domains for some major cities in Democrat strongholds within key swing states: The attackers register their domains a few days in advance of the election, and then on Election Day send out emails signed by .gov from, say, miami.gov (also still available) informing residents that bombs…
I'd say it is an unnecessary position to take but would not call it especially partisan. There is no symmetry in the amount of election meddling that has been done by both parties. Saying the GOP may be a party interested in election meddling is like saying Iran may be interested in funding islamist terror groups. An unnecessary accusation, but hardly a partisan one.
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#108Co-incidently, I just watched a Family Guy episode where Peter and Tom Tucker shoot a skateboarding video, which ends up with Peter being attacked by a bear. The skit ends with a fake advert for www.shirt.gov
Obviously, they thought that there was no way someone could register shirt.gov... how wrong they were ;)
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#109test
Re: It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
#110> A review of the Top 10 most populous U.S. cities indicates only half of them have obtained .gov domains, including Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, and San Diego. > Yes, you read that right: houston.gov, losangeles.gov, newyorkcity.gov, and philadelphia.gov are all still available. As is the .gov for San Jose, Calif., the economic, cultural and political center of Silicon Valley. A minor nit: Many of these ci…
Just because the cities have .gov domains does not counter the fact that the other, very official looking, domains are unused and potentially available.