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Cameroon Typo-Squats all of .com
wayne writes "As reported on CircleID, the nation of Cameroon, which controls the .cm top level domain, has typo-squatted all of the .com domain space. They have placed a wildcard DNS record to redirect all traffic to an ad-based search page. Unlike the earlier case of Verisign putting a wildcard in the real .com domain, ICANN has very little direct control over what a nation can do with their own TLD. Will the owners of .co and .om follow?"
In other news, AOL just released full search records for 500,000 users.... to everybody, not just the DOJ.
That should double their GDP!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Just for any address I will never want to visit, you can just block it. For example, I never will visit ad.doubleclick.net. I have very little reason to visit Cameroon. I will just block all of .cm if the resulting site is annoying.
Encourage everyone to blacklist their TLD until they start letting their people use it for real content, which will happen as soon as someone is in control who understands (and cares) that the nation will benefit more from it.
Persistent attacks on the page might help as well, since it would interfere with their cash flow from it.
That's why it's a typo squat, Dr. Stupid.
.cm != .com
That is rather the point of the thing.
But if you mean to type .com and you actually type .cm then its a typo. If you mean to type .cm and you .cm then it's not a typo.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
If I registered slashdt.org, people would say I was typo-squatting slashdot.org. Similarly, if I redirected *.cm, I would be typo-squatting *.com. The article description is correct.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I tried it, it works! I must say it's a real clever idea. I want a country too!
-- Cheers!
If so, their service would _suck_.
Uh, do you understand the point of the article?
Go to this site: http://www.cnn.com/
Now go here: http://www.cnn.cm/
That's typosquatting.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
No, they typo-squatted ".com", in the same way that "goggle.com" and the like typo-squatted "google.com". Domain-squatting is something else entirely, and involves registering the actual target address and sitting on it, then trying to sell it for an increased sum.
.com by domain-squatting .cm.
They typo-squatted
The .com typo is initially made in the headline of the CircleID article. The headline here possibly needs a (sic) in there but it is faithfully reporting the referenced article.
I'm sure the government of Vomania will benefit highly from my URL mistakes.
I have no idea how many people mistype .com though, that's a pretty bad/lazy typo
As long as the money made from this is going to the goverment of Cameroon and not some registrar, why is this an issue? The .cm ccTLD belongs to Cameroon. Why can't they decide what they want to do with it?
I'm fine with that if a country does it. Its not like Verisign's case. Its their tld and they are free to do whatever they want with it. However, the question is... what happens with that money?
Thanks to SiteFinder, the fixes for this have already been developed. For example, BIND 9 allows the administrator to declare certain zones as being delegation only.
http://outcampaign.org/
.com is typo-squatting all the .cm sites for people who suck miserably at typing.
Just edit your hosts file, and redirect *.cm to 127.0.0.1 in it. That way, even if you ever make that kind of typo on accident, you don't reward them for it.
And if enough people do it, it renders the ENTIRE TLD worthless, thereby economically punishing them, to boot.
To the community of good ideas... And countries that I have heard of.
:/
I will probably be visiting their site often. I go to www.yahoo.cm at least 5 times a week. Before it just hung my web browser
You take it, I don't want it...
Cameroon is not typo-squatting anything. If you type in a domain name ending in .cm that hasn't been specifically assigned to someone, you get a fairly innocuous default page with links to ads. So what?
Anybody who can get hot under the collar over this non-issue has a serious problem.
the Cummin spice group, pls. plc whatever
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I.e., migrate all of .com, .net, etc to .com.us, .net.us (or whatever).
That way, typoing the .com or .net suffix won't take you to a different country unintentionally :D
Sure, the internet was originally created in the US, but it's bigger than that now, and having one country that just doesn't use country suffixes is non-standard. :)
Of course, typo-ing the country suffix will still either not work, or take you to a different country, but what can you do...
As a side-effect, this would no doubt deter other country's businesses etc from simply registering .com, .org or .net domains because the domain rego is cheaper and it's "country-ambiguous"... (yes, I own .net and .org domains and i'm in australia. if it was going to have to be .com.us or whateever, I probably wouldn't be using up your precious US namespace :D)
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
...the Nigerian scammers get wind of this, and move? I mean, it's right next door!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
This sort of thing is an attack on the Internet itself! Remember, an attack on the Internet is an Attack on the United States of America!
Their provocations have gone too far. I reckon a half dozen Slashdotters can push this on enough blogs that soon Faux will hear it, and Chenney and buddies will have Haliburton and those guys in green landing on the beach in no time.
Whaddya say Slashdotters? Can we get a country invaded?
it's typo-squatting any .com domain. www.cnn.com is one character away from www.cnn.cm
So that's exactly what typosquatting is. What do you think it is?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I seriously don't think I've actually typed out "www." or ".com" in at least 4 years. Just type website then Ctrl+Enter and Firefox and IE add it for you. I don't think Safari, Nautilus, or Konqueror do it by default but I might be wrong. But if you're using Firefox, it's so much easier. There's also Shift+Enter for ".net" and Ctrl+Shift+Enter for ".org".
There are so many missdirects on search results anyway, if it's not the right one, just delete the browser tab and move on.
That's what they have, a massive "404" if you will.
.com domain name.
.nu has been doing the same thing for ages, see http://www.aifd9fwejrwpiu34ijlicsa.nu/ - but, ok, they are a little more discrete with the ads and make it clear that the domain name is available.
http://www.aifd9fwejrwpiu34ijlicsa.cm/ for example, an unregistered
You have to admit, the title is very confusing. It's like one of those optical illusions, some people see the candlestick and some people see two faces staring at each other. I think a clearer title would have been "Cameroon cybersquats all of .cm"
dude.. when someone types a .com domain and they forget that last little 'o' it goes to .cm... think before yout type your thought.
It's .cm guys, not .com!
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
In Australia,
.coma.u and I rarly use .com on its own (I am far more likely to put a redundant .au on the end then to miss the "o") so this doesnt bother me much.
The typo I normaly get
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
so how does an admin cname all of .cm to .com?
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
if you use bind put this in options:
root-delegation-only exclude { "DE"; "MUSEUM"; "LV"; "US";};
I might have cared passionately about something like this. Now, I have more faith -- the Internet tends to route around folks with bad manners. This isn't the first time someone's come up with a grandiose plan to corner the market on user error and I doubt it will be the last. If Cameroon pisses off or annoys enough people with a stunt like this, I suspect someone, somewhere will do something about it. At the moment, there's not much more I can do than whine and complain, and I just don't see that it serves a useful purpose to do so.
If any one of the geniuses who dreamed up this little scheme happens to read this message, than I've got just one thing to say to them -- good luck. Maybe it will work out for you... and than again, maybe it won't. Regardless, if you could tell those Nigerian bankers to stop sending me letters asking for my help with fraudulent transactions, I'd surely appreciate it.
Considering it's only the .cm domain that's being polluted, this problem doesn't really bother me that much. On the other hand, the mass registration of domain names under the .com TLD for the purposes of advertising or resale is a much more significant problem. Most of the domain names I've tried to register have already been registered for such purposes. I'd rather see that situation fixed than the .cm typosquatting issue.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
here is the form to complain about the issue
If there was anyway of measuring the alcohol comsumption among internet users I'm sure you'd find that hits on the *.cm site would rise and fall with it :P
No, think before you do anything.
Ye gods what kind of society are we liveing in?
...
Instead of directing to traffic to crappy ad-supported search tool, I would have sacrificed the .01 cameroonian peso for each clickthrough and redirect to a government tourism page. check out or tourisme.cm... the country looks amazing.
serenity now!
For a long time I ve written all addresses partially in the Google searchbar. Takes care of all (mostly) spelling errors and protects from scams like this.
Anders Eg
Since that'll screw with spamfilters (unless, perhaps you make sure that .cm can't be delegated?), perhaps it'd be a good idea to block *.cm from the mail server.
They'll just have to get webmail somewhere if they'd like to send email...
If you mean to type .cm, chances are the domain actually exists, and you'll go to the website as you intended. They're not redirecting *.cm to an ad page, just (unregistered).cm. Like Verisign did with (unregistered).com until the tubes were all full of user backlash.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
It's a joke you fools.
Once every 5 minutes I think I'll be hitting www.youcontributenothingtotheinternet.cm!
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Looking at this is appears that a company called "NameView Inc" is supplying the ads from the IP block 72.51.27.0 - 72.51.27.255 http://www.nameview.com/
Prehaps calling them on +1 (309) 424-5497 might help to say what a bad idea this is or we can just block the IP range (which is now what I'm going to do)
Cheap UK and US VPS
<sarcasm>Yeah! How dare they have their country code as a typo-squat of
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
I dare say that Africa is the most ignored continent. I must admit that I know very little about it, but what I do know is both interesting (armchair history) and really fscked up (Muslim fundies, civil war, extreme poverty).
So by adding one wildcard, Cameroon suddenly manages to get a good portion of the geek internet and maybe a few blurbs on the normal internet paying attention to it. Brilliant.
..and other people feed the trolls.
What's your GCNSEQNO?
I can't get an invalid .cm domain to resolve to anything, and valid sites are abnormally slow - even for an African country.
It benefits the advertisers , it benefits the country , and it doesn't cost me a dime . While is this a bad move ?
My Starcraft 2 Blog
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.cm. IN A
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6369
;; ANSWER SECTION:
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.cm. IN A
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 12264
google.cm. 518 IN A 72.51.27.58
zone "cm" IN { type delegation-only; };
Actually, a couple days ago I typed google.cm and I didn't even notice the error at first when Firefox told me the page was not found. Now that "page not found" -> "random ad site", unless I'm watching myself my first thought is going to be "spyware?" It's a problem.
I'm always hitting enter before the m - google.com
Get your own free personal location tracker
They typo-squatted .com by domain-squatting .cm.
.cm? Who else apart from the Cameroon do you feel should own the TLD? Did Cameroon think "hey - there's a TLD that (insert the "legit." owner of the TLD here) neglected to register....here's a chance to make a quick buck. Now......where's the countrys CmEx(*) card?".
.com, but they're certainly not domain-squatting .cm
They domain-squatted
They may be typo-squatting
--
(*)Cameroon Express - don't leave home without it!.
ICANN has very little direct control over what a nation can do with their own TLD.
ICANN controls a root DNS server, which is authoritative for the "." zone - one level higher than a ccTLD. This means they get to say what DNS servers are authoritative for .cm, and could
send traffic to different servers if they really wanted to. Or at least
they could redirect queries that came to their particular root server. If the
other root servers followed suit they could do whatever they want
with any
ccTLD.
Hey asshole... I'm from South Africa.
... did we just slashdot an entire country?
CTRL+ENTER
One pay 4 times less for a .co.uk domain than for a .com domain in the UK.
It is not only a matter of cost, it's also a matter of branding, marketing, clarification, etc.
Anybody using a local domain is stating clearly where his website is and provide a clue to who it may be aimed at.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Just install the following extension:-
.com typos for you.
http://www.efinke.com/url-fixer/
Corrects common
I have no sig yet I must scream.
They did NOT typo-squat "all of .com". .cm".
They typo-squatted "all of
Quite a difference, if you ask me.
Unless you are a sensationalist, of course.
I liked my next sig a lot better
1. Disarm
2. Teach them how awesome capitalism is
3. Put them to work for pennies a day
4. Profit!!
(no ???? required)
- Typo squatting is *registering* a specific typo. Like trying to get www.gooogle.com and www.gogle.com assigned to your own ad-page (it won't work actually, google have though of it first. But you get the idea). Typo-Squatters buys specific name and puts his page there.
.CM at the end. If genuine website exists, website is displayed. If website doesn't exist, instead of error message, you got sent to an search engine.
.cm's case it's a governement forcing it.
.OM (oman) and .CO (colombia) ) more money to come from domain name selling ! :-/ )
.CMs, and be ready to accept those evil "Typo-Squatters" as a new entry in the list of subject used to scare people, next to "Terrorist", "Pirate", "Pronographer" and "Communist (now defunct)" and other un-american freedom haters.
Original customer un-happy because someone else has bought the typo-name and he can't have it (he can do what google did and buy typo names, because typos are registered to someone else).
- This case is using wild-cards to divert *UN-registered* domain names. One types something with
Original user doesn't mind anything, because if he wants he can still buy the typo name : the typo-name is free to buy, only NON-assigned names are diverted to search site.
The one who is pissed of is the IT-guy, because everything breaks because TLD aren't suposed to work that way, TLD are supposed to give error messages for non-existing domain (and this can break an algorithme that was supposed to detect bogus URLs. URLs aren't invalid any more, they always point to something now !).
So the both aren't exactly the same.
The official rationnal behind wildcarding is that people make typo.
One solution is to buy all possible typo name, but this can be quite expensive and cumbersome, because you have to guess all typos and you may have a lot to buy.
The other solution would be to harness the power of a search engine (and even better if the engine supports spelling suggestions like Google) and help the user find what they really wanted.
This is not unlike what the infamouse Microsoft Explorer "simplified error message" whitch gave you the opportunity to search the name on msn's search engine, and somewhat related to a side effect of the "search engine keywords from the URL bar" function of FireFox.
But the main difference is that those two are users choices, where as in
The real rationnal behind is that the Cameroune governement can make huge amounts of money from an ad-supported search engine, and even more money when some big company realise that there are a few more typo that they can buy a few more typo domains (only the non-existing domain are search diverted. The typo are still available to buy !).
Even if the wildcarding gets forbiden and/or blocked, it will have attracted enough publicity around this few more typos to buy (and the side effect to also attract attention to other TLD that the big companies may have missed, like
(Let's hope that at least part of this money will go to the poeple and not only to the pocket of a few highly placed guys
Sadly, because in this case the people that are pissed off aren't the one with the money (big company will be happy to buy more typo domain, unlike what happens with real cases of typo-squatting) but are the average users (who except tld to issues error for non existing domains), we probably won't see any massive action against Cameroune.
Unless they suddenly happen to discover huge underground petroleum reserves. Then except to see Bush leading a god-inspired holy war to liberate all the poor American-.COM domains squatted by vilain
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Thats rather weak and arrogant. Its legitimate to say they typo squat mistakes made in the .cm TLD, but its a stretch to call that typo squatting .com.
At ask.com: "Where the fuck is Cameroon, Jeeves?"
Click here or here.
They haven't hi-jacked anything, unless it's possible to hi-jacked their own domain. They won't stop companies from registering their own .cm domains, in-fact, I am presuming the aim of their actions is to encourage people to register their domain as a .cm domain.
America, Home of the Brave.
Sounds like these guys have been talking to Grass Valley Greg...
Read my blog.
Now why is then that gov.cm does not resolve? Trying gov.com works beutifully.
send + more == money?
Having a .cm tld is not typosquatting. Redirecting non existant url (finishing or not finishing with .cm) to an ad sponsored search page is typosquatting.
How is a typo "lazy?"
.com frequently (though the end result is usually along the lines of example.cmo instead) and mash the enter key before I even notice what happened, since clicking enter after typing in a URL is pretty much a given.
I typo
so, is there a .cm boom comming up?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
See?? As soon as the US gives up control of the internet, anarchy breaks out. We can't let Cameroon get away with this! It doesn't even have a decent soccer team!! Oh...wait...
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
that would be the kind of traffic they dream of.
!sig
. . . that .comk isn't a valid TLD. I hit that one all the time, but almost never .cm. I figure by the time Google notices they've been typosquatted, Cameroon won't be doing this much longer, or every major browser will just filter the typos.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
So, block it at your firewall.
For example, I block it at my personal firewall (NOT TO SLASHBOTS! I said "my personal firewall", as in "serving my house only" - so don't give me the rant about "OMFG! HOW DARE YOU FILTER OTHER PEEPLES STUFFS!") by using Squid to transparently proxy all HTTP traffic .
Use the following lines in Squid:You can also null-route those domains in your routing tables or block them with IPTables.
For reference, here's the WHOIS on those networks:I would NOT suggest writing these companies - you are just going to get your address added to a spam list (or junk mail list, should you be so foolish as to write to them using the mail and give them your correct address).
Instead, I would contact the upstream providers and complain to them - not that I expect THAT to do much either.
Simpler and more effective by far to block them yourself - and that way, they will NEVER be able to make any money on you, ever again.
It would be *nice* were somebody to create a DNSBL that listed these blocks, so that sysadmins who wished to could use that block to filter as needed.
This specific instance sounds like the usual "Hey, nice TLD you have - are you using it? How'd you like to make some quick cash?", like the
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'd rather live in a god-forsaken place than the US/UK where every other word out of a politician's mouth is "God." George Carlin's hidden third commandment - Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm tired here, not fully awake and need to rush out the door, but I'm thinking I could fix this from a zone file in a bind, although the logic escapes me much the same way a hosts fix wouldn't.
have a zone that is simply 'cm'? Have all entries that are cm get parsed by an external script that could run a regex and send them to $1.com instead? Bah...gotta wake up here.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
lk buddy, my keybard is quite ld s yu dn't expect all the keys t wrk prperly, nw d yu?
.cm very ften
I have truble with
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
well fr yur inf that key desn't wrk n my keybard, you insensitive cld!
It's a harmless advertising page. So what? Is the internet now in some kind of jeopardy because of this? Good on the government of Cameroon, I say. I'm glad they've found a profitable use for their .cm domain -- I'll be sure to type my URLs more carefully ;)
Remember, this is DNS, so this will affect not only your web browser, but all your Internet applications.
So, guess what happens if you try to send a mail to friend@gmail.cm? Yup, it also gets the Cameroon treatment:Even though the server currently will bounce your mail with a 550 Domain does not exist, they now have your email address and, with a quick typo-fix, that of your friend.
Hey! Guess what country is next door to Cameroon? Yup, Nigeria. Now, who in Nigeria might want a fresh source of email addresses...?
And who is to say they bounce all mails? Or will continue to?
It's .NULL, and it's the default.
paintball
Oh c'mon, where's that gnaa troll when you need 'em?
If .VOM isn't taken yet, you could start a country with THAT as your top level domain.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
That can be said about any country, anywhere, about the people and the government.
This isn't just an attempt to grab cash; that's a side effect. This is to hamper the ability of opposition parties to use the Internet as a voice.
Then they will have to find another voice. The masses aren't stupid. If they are being owned by a government, they know it, and if they don't like it they will do something sooner or later. BTW, some people don't mind being under a military or controlling government. It's not what everybody is accustomed to, but there are many ways to rule on the face of this earth.
The government in Cameroon controls the TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers tightly; they don't want the Internet to be any different.
Then practically speaking why should the Internet be any different? It makes sense in the context of that country.
I can see no good reasons in this discussion why Cameroon (the government) cannot do what they want with their domain name. The exceptions are: we don't like typo-squatting, or we don't like the government. The government is representing the people whether outsiders agree with it or not, and even if the people being represented don't agree. Everybody else in the world is too opinionated about what other countries should do, whether it be a different ruling style or something as small as a domain name suffix. We don't like being told what we should do with our country's domain name suffix, so why should we care what another country (yes the government, not the people) does with theirs?
(Actually, I expect to get many good reasons back about the history and politics and Cameroon and the people because I only know what I've read in the news and wiki -- I've never studied the country in depth.)
Everybody who surfs the Internet has no doubt experienced a typo and a typo-squatter. People will correct the spelling and move on. The generic Cameroon page looks like any other page full of advertisements on the Internet. Nobody is going to think it's the actual destination they want to surf to.
My first thought upon seeing Cameroon was fond memories of destroying their soccer team in that old World Cup Soccer game for the NES.
Unregistered domains shouldn't resolve. All sorts of things on the internet rely on being able to get an NXDOMAIN response. It's domain squatting.
This isn't just an attempt to grab cash; that's a side effect. This is to hamper the ability of opposition parties to use the Internet as a voice.
Then they will have to find another voice. The masses aren't stupid. If they are being owned by a government, they know it, and if they don't like it they will do something sooner or later. BTW, some people don't mind being under a military or controlling government. It's not what everybody is accustomed to, but there are many ways to rule on the face of this earth.
Yeah, they're called Republicans.
Huh. That's pretty damn useful.
Thanks.
Nnnnoooooo - it's *not* domain squatting. The following cut'n'pasted from wikipedia: -
.com domain.
According to the U.S. federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, Cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price, an act which some deem to be extortion.
They're not domain squatting.
The following (also) cut'n'pasted from wikipedia: -
Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative address owned by a cybersquatter.
They're typo squatting the whole of the
Unregistered domains shouldn't resolve. All sorts of things on the internet rely on being able to get an NXDOMAIN response. It's typo squatting on a huge scale. But it's *still* typo squatting.
Am I the only one surprised that Kirk still wields such power? I could understand back in the early 90's, but I figured his influence would have wained by now.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
this will just get DNS servers admins to Block .cm
.cm for this problem..
I personaly will have a block on all
look.. resolved..
Freaky Schitt always happens to me... WHY God WHY!!
Aww... I feel so sorry for you.
Educate yourself on Attrition Warfare. The US has won every war thus far, by beating its enemy into the stone age. The same thing is happening in Iraq. 30,000 dead iraqis to 2,500 dead americans? I don't think that's a quagmire.
I'd rather live with a bunch of "niggers" than a bunch of stupid fucking americans.
Ummm.... Yes, they are. They are using domain names with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. They are domain squatting against any Cameroonian organisation that people might try to visit by going to one of the wild carded URL's. They are also typosquatting against all Cameroonian organisation with web sites. They are also typosquatting against all of
If the government of Cameroon want to be dishonest opportunists like that, then lets us non-Cameroonian countries just stop resolving any DNS requests for any .cm addresses whatsoever. When they find that they cant get any emails from the outside world, and all the extra-national traffic to legitimate Cameroonian websites drops to zero, I bet they'll stop in no time at all.
I visit www.cnn.cm two to three times a month. It really depends on the speed I'm typing, whether I'm paying attention, and the keyboard I'm using.
;p )
(After typing the "www," all the remaining letters are on the bottom row, except that "o." My work desktop keyboard has more resistance than my laptop, so when I bounce my finger up to the top row to hit the "o," it may depress at home but miss at work. My right index finger isn't exactly my strongest finger.
And it isn't lazy. Folks who type without looking at either the keyboard or the screen are usually considered the better typists. (Assuming they are accurate, of course!) Call it "bad," but not "lazy."
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It has Mount Cameroon, arguably the most impressive coastal volcano in africa, which towers over the surrounding terrain, nothing in a long long ways comes close to its elevation.
You can also enjoy a unique boating experience on effervescent Lake Nyos.
map of the region
Also you could go visit Lake Chad before its all gone. Though I'm not sure if Cameroon touches it anymore, given its ongoing dessication...
(I may sound sarcastic, but would actually love to visit these places... they really are unique, and dangerous or not, the kind of thing I'm into...)
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
So they're offering the domain name to a trademark owner at an inflated price? No, they're not. There is no holding companies to ransom for their domain names - hell, if you look at the .cm registration page, they aren't even listing "premium" domain name pricing, or auctioning off domain names. You want it and it's not registered, it's all one price. It's a manual paper-based registration process, which could make it a bit of a ...BIND...(sorry - couldn't resist!).
.cm domain. Would there be this fuss if the typos got redirected to http://info.intelcam.cm/? I somehow don't think so.
/. don't like it, because Profit == BAD. Mark me down as troll if you want here, but Profit != BAD. In fact, Profit == GOOD. If the company I work for didn't make a profit, then I'd have no job, and the same goes for most of you out there. Now, the actions of the .cm TLD administrators may well have unforseen (to them) consequences wrt spam filtering etc., but there's nothing inherently wrong in the motives of what they're doing.
They are the legitimate TLD holders for the
The real problem here is that the Cameroon govt. has worked out a deal where they can supplement the income of the country through advertising revenue, and the great and the good that sit in judgement every day here on
...now you're just annoying. Pedantic prik.
No, it is not a correct solution to put com.us on all of the .com addresses. First of all because .com can be used by anyone, not only by the US, and secondly what is the purpose of putting a .us on a company, whose product is manufactured in China, who is registered in Bermuda to avoid high taxation, who outsources their thinking to India or Eastern Europe and who has offices all over the globe? How is that a .us business?
You can't handle the truth.
I thought of doing this with Cameroon and Colombia about ten years ago.
Since when am I one of HIS citizens? I call bullshit.
I also call bullshit on feeling protected. And who am I being protected from? Those nasty Iraqis who didn't have anything to do with 9/11? Oh, them, huh? I feel safe. But then again, I felt pretty safe beforehand.
Now, on the other hand, am I being protected from Bin Laden (That is, if he isn't a scapegoat) or those planejackers mainly from Saudi Arabia? Oh, that's right...
It's also written "Thou shall not kill", there is no exception for anything, whether it be "unless you are the leader of a country", "your kids are hungry", or "even if what you are killing is just a plant"...
Pot-squatting is something else too.
Get your own free personal location tracker
1 2 3 4 5
. o r g (enter)
All the same I'd rather type it out each time than rely on some shortcut which may not work on other browsers. Anyone remember WordPerfect macros? (shudder)
Yeah, Britain never recovered from the beating it took in tha War of 1812.
Perhaps Canadians can distract Californians, Israil sites can snag some folks from Illinois, and Poland can abscond with some perl programmer traffic.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Replaced by what, I'm not certain. Perhaps confederated search engines. But DNS and it's domain names may become obsolete. URLs are just too technical, too difficult to memorize, and don't provide associated content. I suspect in 10 years or maybe less we'll see browser with just one big search bar instead of URL field.
(obviously the opinons stated are the opinions of the author and may not represent a past, present or future reality)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So basically you believe war is a game with the score kept in number of deaths. By that logic the Axis won WWII. Most people think wars are won by achieving political objectives. In simple terms, you have is backwards. Countries and movements that are willing to sacrifice lives disproportionally are the ones which win wars of attrition. Hence the NLF and North Vietnam defeated the US in a war of attrition.
First of all, it's their damned space. They have ultimate authority over it, therefore they have the right to do this if they want.
Secondly, since when have generic holding/advert pages ever (a) done any harm, or (b) generated any revenue? I don't know anyone who would say, "oh look--www.microsoft.com is now a generic advertising page. I must click on everything and buy garbage from it!"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
When domain wildcarding was done with large, popular TLD's such as .com, a very large number of people are affected globally and it involved a private company in order to better its own position. When a small country such as Cameroon does it to their TLD, only a relatively small number of people are affected -- how many active .cm domains can there be? For the most part, the only affected people are the residents of Cameroon. How is this any worse than countries that firewall those parts of the Internet that the countrys' leaders don't fancy?
The money made from that is almost certainly tied to the number of hits they get on that page. If people all over the world set up jobs to grab random .com domains using the .cm typo the real typos would be lost in the noise and become valueless.
It is possible they derive some income from those who actually use the search page that comes up, but I doubt many people who are typing a URL into their address bar and get a search page by mistake actually use it. Of course, click fraud could be used against that as well...
Before, my typos would just get me a server not found. Now I'm going to get stuck with charges for surfing long distance!
If you think it's controversial now, everyone on Slashdot just started dropping millions of pennies into the pockets of the Cameroon government. Gotta love the Internet
Please tell me i'm not the first?
Any worse than how Verisign and Cameroon have modified how a DNS server is expected to respond (IE: with a NXDOMAIN)?
I have no idea how many people mistype .com though, that's a pretty bad/lazy typo
indeed. especially when browsers support CTRL+ENTER since like forever.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
to select all the posts about Verisign doing this, doing a quick replace from Verisign to Cameroon, and placing them in this thread (or the inevitable dupe story) would save us all a lot of time on this one.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
ALT + 111 (in Windows)
IME, if you get the street number right, there is a non-negligible probability that the postal service will deliver to a different, usually nearby, address anyway, particularly if the intended address is in a location with a common cluster of mailboxes.
The idea that a incorrect (but valid) address gets the mail automagically returned by the Postal Service is, nice as it sounds, wrong.
So I wonder how long it will take for the population to change who they look to for TDL services?
DNS is cooperative. If I don't like the LD services someone provides I am free to use someone else. Changing the routing is more difficult to get around.
My prediction is this part of the net will splinter and then heal itself.
You think it's about lives? Pish tosh, babies practically make themselves! It's about *resources*, and wars of attrition can easily be expressed in dollars. How far down the GDP list is every country who has tried to go against the US? Pretty damned far down it, that's where. Americans have no problem living fat, happy lives while the vietnamese, koreans, etc (to a lesser extent the japanese and british) are still struggling to maintain a first world economy. Who won again?
As far as the royal navy went, no it did not fully recover. After centuries of being the supreme naval power, when facing the newbie u.s. captains who were in command of inferior vessels the royal navy (in the americas) got served. As for the land war, very few british troops even participated (it was mostly a landgrab attempt by the newly formed coalition of states against those colonies that did not join with them, namely the canadian territories).
I really could care less, but anyway:
zone "cm" { type delegation-only; };
There, annoying problem solved.
Why have I not seen anyone else that pointed out the subject of this article?
Cameroon squats all of .com? No. All of .cm which they control. Slashdot has made the exact (opposite) mistake that the Cameroonians (?) are hoping for. Just proving how often that sort of idiotic mistake can be made.
Health is simply dying at the slowest rate possible.
http://weblog.johnlevine.com/ICANN/cameroon.html?s eemore=y
.com page, usually with one of those links leading to the corresponding .com page."
"But then there are a bunch of straight typo-squats: cheaptickets.cm, dictionary.cm, download.cm, flowers.cm, games.cm, lasvegas.cm, monster.cm, realtor.cm, refinance.cm, and rent.cm. They all point to the same server at Rackspace in Texas, which serves up pages full of links related to the corresponding
...uh, no, they "typo-squatted" all of the .cm domain space.
Sure, "cm" is similar to "com" but there is no other relation between the two.
-b
myselfmusic
Which is good. Implies that they have implemented appropriate delegation filters for the .cm zone.
or they've got a really broken DNS server set...
In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"