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Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

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Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#71

Post by foresto »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #65
foresto wrote: post #63

Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters. Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

From TFA: Will WHOIS requests leak my address? Nope. Even though you must supply your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your locality domain will only show information about the registrar.

That was clearly not true for domains directly under .us when I last read their rules, roughly a year ago.

I suppose it might be true for .city.state.us subdomains, but those fail my first criterion (they're not short), and are themselves a privacy hazard since they substantially narrow the search space for personal info about the domain owner. So it doesn't refute my criticism.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#72

Post by ssl-3 »

toast0 wrote: post #55
ssl-3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange time machine. The website offered to sell unlimited dialup for me, in Ohio, using a local phone number. I Googled that number, and it appears that it may belong to another (related? different?) time machine: https://www.panix.com/dialup/

I worked at a tiny ISP in 2000. We had nationwide (maybe worldwide?) dialups through MegaPoP [1]; they would passthrough auth for user@dgx.net to our radius server, and charge us (IIRC) $5 for each user that successfully authenticated every month. I think we charged $10/month for local dialup only (where they called into our T1 modem bank) and $20/month for nationwide dialup... at least until our modem bank T1 failed…

Neat! I didn't know how that worked. The little ISP I used to do some things for had physical POPs in different cities and AFAIK never went with Megapop or similar. Eventually, their POPs became all-in-one card cage devices that took a combination of PRI and T1 circuits and screwed them together with PPP, which seemed quite highly integrated to me at that time.

It does look like these may be Starnet/Megapop numbers, based on the panix.motd.megapop newsgroup mentioned on Panix's website. I did spend a minute trying to find who (if anyone) is steering the remaining dregs of Megapop, but I didn't make it very far.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#73

Post by xahrepap »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #65
foresto wrote: post #63

Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters. Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

From TFA: Will WHOIS requests leak my address? Nope. Even though you must supply your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your locality domain will only show information about the registrar.

This is definitely not true for general .us domains.

I registered one a year or two ago. And assuming my normal default Whois privacy was being applied (I clicked through too fast. Wasn’t paying attention)

I noticed my mistake after the spam bots started hitting me up for their web design products.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#75

Post by ZeWaka »

anonu wrote: post #66
foresto wrote: post #63

Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters. Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#76

Post by anticorporate »

TrevorFSmith wrote: post #7

Definitely keep in mind that right or wrong, these hosts are unusual as far as most commercial services are concerned and it can reveal annoying edge cases in their software.

True. I struggled to get signed up for my COVID vaccine back in 2021 because Walgreens wouldn't accept that my totally valid .rodeo email address could possibly exist.

I still use that domain for most corporate accounts. Currently, my wireless carrier refuses to believe I exist in some of their systems (but not others) because of it.

Fortunately, escalating complaints with large corporations with shitty practices is a hobby of mine.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#77

Post by fullstop »

kraptv wrote: post #46

I have three locality domains, all with different registrars in Oregon. Two are with unique delegated locality domain registrars (think old school consultancies or ISPs that still exist) and one directly via localitymanagement.us (GoDaddy/USTLD). One of the registrars is from an out of state operator that has been dead for three years. I tracked his widow down and had a number of cordial conversations over about 18 m…

I used to have some domains registered with "theparsec.com", and would communicate with the owner, "ML", on occasion. It was great, he was responsive and helped me out if an order didn't go through for some reason.

In 2022, their TLS certificates were off -- a subdomain used by a backend redirect process was no longer valid, so I contacted "ML" and they were unresponsive. I managed to get my domains to a new register by ignoring some TLS warnings and transferring them. As of July of 2022, I have not heard from "ML" and I assume that he passed away. I don't know their identity or what became of them. All I know is that their name is/was Mark.

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#78

Post by Atotalnoob »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #60
Xirdus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you stop thinking of domain as an addressing tool and start thinking of them as branding, the complaints will make sense. "Dot k12 dot oh dot us" is a terrible brand name.

I have a hard time with public dollars going to "branding" but I do recognize it's a concern for some people and I'm a vastly minority opinion.

Public dollars or not, it IS branding.

Having a strong, consistent, easy to use name IS a positive.

It’s easy to remember, which means more “engagement”. For a local government organization, that means more support, more feedback, and the constituents are “getting their moneys worth” more than a government organization that they can’t ever interact with.

It’s a clear win for using your dollars BETTER

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#79

Post by EduardoBautista »

ZeWaka wrote: post #75
anonu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.

There are services that will submit this information to hundreds of sites for you.

I used incogni and it seemed to have a positive result.

https://incogni.com/

Re: Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

#80

Post by rootusrootus »

anonu wrote: post #66
foresto wrote: post #63

Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters. Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

You can get some of the major sources to remove you with a service like Optery [0]. Costs a few bucks, but if you let them work at it a few months you can drop the subscription and the effects will linger for a while before you start finding yourself on public databases again.

I used it myself and I have trouble finding information about myself, even with my inside knowledge. If someone is determined enough you probably can't really hide from them, especially if they have any connections to law enforcement or one of the big data sinks. But you can definitely make it harder for casuals.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery

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