Earlier quoted context omitted.
why not?
It's a vector for identity theft.
You realize your birth date is public information, right?
Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
201–210 of 233 posts
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#202> 5. Date Operational......: You can use your birth date here. Yikes, no!
It is not hard to find the average US citizen's birthday if you know their real name. Same things with addresses, can be painfully easy (a few minutes often).
Let's just be honest, it's 2026 and you are advocating for security through obscurity.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
why not?
It's a vector for identity theft.
My name, and the very fact that I exist are vectors for identity theft. But that doesn't mean I should keep those facts secret either, or that simply attempting to keep them secret will have any effect whatsoever.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in sweden, personal data such as name, address, income, birth date, personal number, car ownership, etc. is public by design. I find it interesting how the view on this differs depending on country and what people are used to.
The issue is the spam All of our personal identification data is available, not by design, but it is available
What kind of spam is that? All my info is available online, but I don't really get much spam. Of course, I get spam to my email but my email address is everywhere (also by design) so that's no wonder.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#205Aren’t there several states that have the same city name repeated within the state? I think there’d need to be a county delineator here too.
No, historically the US postal service would make anyone who couldn't claim they had the name first change it. I grew up in a small town in rural OH that had to do this in it's history since the name they chose was already in use by another village/town in the state.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#206Unfortunately the author is correct that you’re pretty screwed if the locality is no longer delegated. I messaged GoDaddy to register one in Boston, they asked for a _notarized_ letter on the local governments letter head approving. No one within the Boston city government knew what their procedure would be, and those willing to say yes didn’t have a notary around. They ended up citing a state law indicating that no…
I am not sure I understand. Are you saying boston.ma.us and cambridge.ma.us are no longer delegated? A whois record on both of the subdomains tells me there is a registrar for it. Either ways, I am happy to band together if it makes a difference.
I only have first hand experience with boston.ma.us and seattle.wa.us, and might have some of the terminology wrong but:
* Originally, anyone could ask to take responsibility for a locality, and serve as the registrar for it. Individuals and small ISPs did this en masse.
* Many decades have passed, many went out of business or became derelict in their obligation to administer their delegated subdomain.
* When this occurs, the responsibility rolled back up to top level registrar which today is GoDaddy (used to be Nuestar until they got bought). GoDaddy's policy is that they'll only give out a subdomain registration on a locality if you show them a notarized letter from the locality's government saying you can have it. They will _not_ delegate the whole locality back to a local entity to set up a process.
* No one in local government will furnish this letter, because it's logistically inconvenient ("no notary in our office") and there's no official policy on how to handle the requests ("all I can find is this state law that says we can't"). My representative declined, and even talking with the tech people in City of Boston only went in circles. I may have been the first person to ask, and they'd probably rather I registered an .e.g. .boston and left them alone.
Meanwhile for Seattle, the small ISP that manages the locality TLD is alive and well and will hook you up within the week for free. I registered http://rcr.seattle.wa.us/ while talking to the Boston IT people as a small demonstration that other similar localities have functioning ecosystems around the TLD, to no avail.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#207Aren’t there several states that have the same city name repeated within the state? I think there’d need to be a county delineator here too.
ooh, this reminds me of Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses... https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
Sadly Portland OR eliminated one of my favorites by introducing "South Portland" and eliminating significant leading zeros from address numbers.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#208Aren’t there several states that have the same city name repeated within the state? I think there’d need to be a county delineator here too.
That gets extremely complicated. My town straddles the border between 2 counties. And you can't trivially have subdomains for counties and cities at the same level, because Wyoming has a Laramie city but it's in Albany County, not the neighboring Laramie County. Did this just inspire the next "Falsehoods programmers believe about... Federalism"?
This comes up with school districts too. My home county in rural Ohio had a school district administration that oversaw all the schools in the county but there are two 'exempted' school districts. One is a town that is split between two counties, so the school district would fall in two counties. Hence it is "exempted" from both and the official name is " Exempted Village Schools". The other one if the largest town in the county, which due to it's size voted to exempt itself from the services and administration of the county government, presumably since this single school has as many students as the rest of the county combined.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#209Unfortunately the author is correct that you’re pretty screwed if the locality is no longer delegated. I messaged GoDaddy to register one in Boston, they asked for a _notarized_ letter on the local governments letter head approving. No one within the Boston city government knew what their procedure would be, and those willing to say yes didn’t have a notary around. They ended up citing a state law indicating that no…
I am not sure I understand. Are you saying boston.ma.us and cambridge.ma.us are no longer delegated? A whois record on both of the subdomains tells me there is a registrar for it. Either ways, I am happy to band together if it makes a difference.
My proposed way of breaking the logjam with city of Boston has two prongs:
1. Have several independent people simultaneously and persistently asking for a letter allowing them to have a subdomain. Provide social proof that at least a few people want the city to provide this service.
2. Obtain a letter from another MA locality which is more willing/able, to be able to show the city that its possible within state rules. I was planning to give it a go with Cambridge.
I am happy to forward my correspondence with the city to you or anyone interested in giving it a go. You can find my email address if you look.
Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, but typically, when two towns in a state share a name, only one is an incorporated city at most. The other, or both, are usually unincorporated communities. Normally, unincorporated communities do not receive a city.state.us locality domain.
For city.state.us, I'm pretty sure first to file (while filing was available) wins... Ohio doesn't (or at least historically didn't) have a highlander restriction for incorporated cities. Oakwood, Cuyahoga County was incorporated in 1951 although Oakwood, Montgomery County was incorporated in 1908. There's also an Oakwood in Paulding County, but its wikipedia page doesn't have an incorporation date or explicitly decl…
Oakwood in Montgomery county is addressed as Dayton on all mail until you get to Kettering which has it's own name for addressing.
A quick search shows that Oakwood in Paulding County has it's own PO and zip code 45873 and Oakwood, Cuyahoga County has 44146.
I suspect that the postal service is much more forgiving on duplicate town names since the advent of zip codes.