Domain Hacks

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

A focus on so-called “domain hacks” grew when social bookmarking site del.icio.us starting gaining international attention. The actual domain for the site is http://icio.us, but del is a subdomain. It’s a neat way to make a word out of an otherwise indeterminable domain.

Creating domain hacks can be fun but may create security issues. Will it ever amount to a brandable domain? Doubtful. Every time I try to go to the Delicious site I end up typing some other variation, like deli.cio.us and end up at a parked page. Perhaps that’s why the owner of del.icio.us recently bought delicious.com.

Domain hacks have their own entry at Wikipedia. There’s a site of domain name hack suggestions at Xona.com/domainhacks/. At the site you can enter a word and it will suggest ways to “hack” the domain. For example, enter Fabulous and it will suggest Fabulo.us. You can also have it suggest hacks for you by number of letters.

Are domain hacks harmless fun? Not really. I can see these being used in the future for phishing attacks. PayPal is a favorite of phishers, and it might be hard to notice a link in your e-mail for http://payp.al. (.al is Albania’s domain extension). Or how about BankofAmeri.ca?

Further Reading:

  1. Del.icio.us Rebrands as Delicious.com: A Lesson for Entrepreneurs

2 Comments » - Posted in Domain Services by

Comments

  1. ecig
    November 6th, 2011 | 4:03 pm

    stumbled throughout this in my search for one thing referring to this.

  2. Albania-Domain
    February 10th, 2012 | 5:43 am

    I know the person that own payp.al and is very clever.

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