The Perils of an .xyz Domain • Hacker News Board

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#61

Post by indymike » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

maxwell wrote: post #40

Spivak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because spam really is that rampant. There aren't that many communication systems with a small search domain of user ids where anyone can send and receive messages from anyone by default.

Why not impose costs instead of filtering?

They do.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#62

Post by tombert » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

hcurtiss wrote: post #36

tombert wrote: post #27

I was pretty excited when ICANN opened up a bunch of new domain extensions, but it does sometimes feel like "all these extensions are great if you don't plan on using them". It was pretty cool that I managed to buy a bunch of domains like . , but to be honest I really don't see myself using my .blackfriday domain for anything. For that matter, I think that (somewhat ironically) `my-last-name.email` would not be taken…

I had .email for a while. Many shopping sites wouldn't actually let you use the address, presumably given some filter assuming that "email" was a fake address. Because my name ends with "ss", I switched over to .es, which conveniently is a country TLD (Spain). That's worked very well, though occasionally I'll get spam in Spanish, which cracks me up.

That's a clever workaround, though doesn't the .es TLD requires some kind of tie to Spain?

I'm not sure how they could possibly enforce that, but in the purely technical sense, are you technically breaking rules?

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#63

Post by frosted-flakes » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

kop316 wrote: post #45

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though it will claim it is delivered I thought SMS didn’t have delivery receipts?

They certainly do. In Chatty: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/merge_requests/786 . Some carriers even charge for the service (!!): https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/434 MMS has delivery reports too (I implimented support for it myself for mainline Linux Phones). It even has read reports, but no carrier seems to honor using it (which is why I didn't bother to impliment it). I'm not sure if Android…

There is an option to enable delivery receipts on Android (Google and Samsung). I believe it is disabled by default.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#64

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

Yep - used to work at a bank that very aggressively blocked gTLD because they had a (very stupid in this case) security-first mindset. Despite having multiple first-class URL filter products that can detect reputation and site category without needing to bother an analyst or cause a disruption.

SOCs, web filter, email filter teams and vendors all need to catch up to the 2010-era idea that carpet-blocking TLDs is not the first tool to reach for when securing a network, especially when you have a good URL filter in place.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#65

Post by weinzierl » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #27

I was pretty excited when ICANN opened up a bunch of new domain extensions, but it does sometimes feel like "all these extensions are great if you don't plan on using them". It was pretty cool that I managed to buy a bunch of domains like . , but to be honest I really don't see myself using my .blackfriday domain for anything. For that matter, I think that (somewhat ironically) `my-last-name.email` would not be taken…

I secured .name many years ago. Must have been early 2000's (.name is around for a long time). It wasn't exactly cheap and it is not one of the super cheap domains now. The registry seemed to have a relatively strict policy regarding who can own a .name (not sure if still true, haven't checked again since like 2002). So, the best preconditions to keep their space clean, it seemed...

Yet I gave up on it for the same reasons mentioned in the article: It has a terrible reputation and seems to randomly be blocked here and there.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#66

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #3

> One surprising side effect of having a .xyz domain is that the mere inclusion of .xyz inside of a text message will result in a silent delivery failure for many providers. Why are people afraid to use the real term for this? It's called censorship. Your provider is silently censoring your text messages. In peacetime. You can't expect it to improve when that's no longer the case.

You'll find I agree that the concept of silently spam filtering on TLD of a link is something that pisses me off.

You'll also find that calling this "censorship" as if it has to do with government action, or that it has to do with the content of the specific site, is ludicrous.

This is incompetence, not malice.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#67

Post by waiseristy » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

The XYZ TLD is a hotbed for spam due to it's very low fee's for purchase / renewal. The registrar was, at one point, selling massive blocks of xyz domains to foreign squatters and spam artists for quick cash. No wonder it's become blacklisted by email/cell providers.

Can anyone try `abc.xyz`? and see if that fails to send? It would be very typical for our corporate overlords to be omitted from our spam censorship filters.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#68

Post by krono » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

maxwell wrote: post #34

krono wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking of messages/emails and blanket email server/domain/extension blacklisting is the same as a postal service not delivering mail to or from a particular entity/street/town. Doing so silently and without a valid and case-specific reason should not be legally allowed. Edit: Added "street/town" to analogy, and "case-specific" before reason

The FCC classified SMS/MMS as unregulated, filterable "information services" rather than regulated "telecommunications services". https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sms-mms-deemed-infor...

They should really update the "Mission and strategy" chapter on their Wikipedia page [1]. In particular the part about "Protecting Consumers & Public Safety" seems horribly outdated!

I will have to look up how this works in the EU and here in The Netherlands. Something to do for the weekend.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commiss...

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#69

Post by readflaggedcomm » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

EduardoBautista wrote: post #56

mtm7 wrote: post #51

Has anyone noticed any of this with .dev domains?

I haven't noticed any issues. An advantage of .dev is that it belongs to Google, so I am sure it that will work smoothly for the most part.

Alphabet also owns abc.xyz, but the author observes that Google Voice seems to censor it.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#70

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

humanistbot wrote: post #2

> One surprising side effect of having a .xyz domain is that the mere inclusion of .xyz inside of a text message will result in a silent delivery failure for many providers. This is wild to me. Tested it out myself and I couldn't send an SMS with a spot.xyz link to/from Google Voice T-Mobile. And no "failed delivery" notice either, just a silent failure. And yet I still get so many texts that are obviously spam or ph…

If you’re in Canada, and send an SMS containing the string “special message” to or from a Telus customer (or one of their sub-brands), it will be silently dropped. Telus is one of the big3 telecoms here.