Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

Heading to WHD next week? Here are some interesting sessions.

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

From net neutrality to blockchain, here are three interesting sessions at next week’s conference.

WorldHostingDays is heading to Las Vegas next week and much of the domain name industry will be there. If you will be at the conference and have something to talk about, drop me a line to set up a meeting.

Here are a couple sessions I think will be interesting:

Mike Masnick, CEO of TechDirt – This will be particularly timely given his court victory over a libel claim.

Panel on Net Neutrality – Some of the speakers on this panel were involved in the recent scuffle over white supremacist and hate sites, including CloudFlare and DreamHost. I think that will be very relevant to the discussion of net neutrality, even if it wasn’t the original intent of the session.

Ian Khan – Futurist Ian Khan promises to separate hype from reality on topics like blockchain and AI.

This will be the first WHD.usa since GoDaddy acquired the company that runs the show. Its fingerprint is clearly on some of the sessions, so it will be interesting to see how this is received by attendees.

Share6
Share5
+1
Email
Shares 29

Top 5 Domain Name Stories from August

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

A look back at the past month in the domain business.

The Verizon Center in Washington D.C. is being renamed the Capital One Arena.

The top story on Domain Name Wire last month was an arena naming deal that I scooped. Other topics include data privacy, a neo-nazi website and tough times in the domain business. Here are the top five stories ranked by pageviews:

1. Verizon Center in Washington DC likely to become Capital One Center – The most viewed story last month was my scoop about a name change for the arena in Washington D.C. Using recent domain name registrations, I concluded that it would be renamed from the Verizon Center to the Capital One Arena.

2. Will May 2018 be the death of Whois? – The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) isn’t a sexy topic, but it’s going to have a major impact on domain names.

3. GoDaddy drops Uniregistry again – GoDaddy will stop offering Uniregistry domains (again). It struck a deal with Hexonet to manage Uniregistry names that are already registered with GoDaddy.

4. Google ends up with DailyStormer.com domain name – Domain name registrars and other service providers played a game of hot potato with the racist Daily Stormer website.

5. Cold winds in the domain industry? – The domain business is in a bit of a funk.

And here are the podcasts Domain Name Wire published last month:

#150 – Get ready to MERGE!
#149 – Frank Schilling talks domains
#148 – Domain name due diligence
#147 – Leverage your Domain Buys

Share13
Share2
+111
Email
Shares 61

Bret Fausett joins Tucows, Statton Hammock to MarkMonitor

by — Uncategorized 8 Comments

Two lawyers change employers.

Bret Fausett (left) and Statton Hammock (right)

Two legal minds in the domain name industry have found new homes.

Bret Fausett has joined Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) as Chief Legal Officer and VP, Regulatory Affairs. Fausett left his General Counsel role at Uniregistry in July after nearly six years at the company. Prior to that, he was in private practice.

Statton Hammock is now Vice-President, Global Policy and Industry Development at MarkMonitor, a Clarivate Analytics company. Hammock left Rightside in August subsequent to the company’s acquisition by Donuts. He had been at the company for five years and has prior experience at Network Solutions.

Share11
Share112
+111
Email
Shares 171

Instagram registers Doxagram domain names in wake of data breach

by — Uncategorized 5 Comments

Company’s domain registrations are probably futile.

Instagram hacked, DoxAGram selling data.

This week news broke that hackers stole account information on perhaps six million Instagram users and are selling the data. A group of hackers being called DoxAGram is responsible for the breach.

In the wake of the breach and disclosure, Instagram is registering lots of domain names with DoxAGram in them. It’s unclear why Instagram is choosing the domains that it is.

For example, it has registered domains across many of Uniregistry’s top level domains, including doxagram.christmas, doxagram.hiphop and doxagram.mom. It has also registered domains from other registries, such as doxagram.guru. Yet it has left some obvious ones off the registration list, such as doxagram.store.

Perhaps it is still going through the process of registering domains, but I’m not sure that registering domains across nearly 1,000 top level domains makes sense.

Share13
Share6
+1
Email
Shares 24

.Cam will be confused for .Com

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

The similarity at quick glance will fool a lot of people.

.Cam is short for Camera, but businesses should consider registering the domains to reduce the chances of phishing.

Verisign objected when companies applied for the .cam top level domain. It argued that the string was too similar to .com and would cause confusion. One panelist agreed with Verisign and another didn’t, leading to the ICANN board intervening. Long story short, .cam is now a top level domain with about 4,000 registrations.

So, is .cam confusing with .com? It just was for me.

I was reviewing UDRP decisions on UDRPSearch when I came across a decision for WellsFargo.cam. I didn’t notice the a instead of o in the extension. I figured it was an IDN second level domain that looked really similar to the ASCII version. When I read the decision there was no mention of that, though. It took me about a minute to realize the top level domain.

If this fooled me momentarily, imagine what will happen to the average internet user who gets visits a phishing site that uses .cam?

I think it would be wise for large brands to register their matching .cam domain name for defensive purposes.

Share
Share
+1
Email