Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
I tried it, it works! I must say it's a real clever idea. I want a country too!
-- Cheers!
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
I'm sure the government of Vomania will benefit highly from my URL mistakes.
.com is typo-squatting all the .cm sites for people who suck miserably at typing.
Same reasons that Verisign's wildcard service was decried, among other things this will cause every name.cm to resolve so it's going to at least screw with some spam blocking methods. If other countries follow suit then it gets even messier.
You're right that it belongs to them but there is such a thing as playing nicely. Also it's a bit of a spammy trick, so it's already making me associate Cameroon with spammers and their ilk. Was that their intention? Will they be happy with that? If you lived in Cameroon would you like the fact that your government (since the government assigns who runs the ccTLD) is making your country look like that?
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.
There are so many missdirects on search results anyway, if it's not the right one, just delete the browser tab and move on.
Because the government of Cameroon is not Cameroon.
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. The government in Cameroon controls the TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers tightly; they don't want the Internet to be any different.
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.
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
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
;; 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; };
So, this option will preemptively avoid all jerkwads like Verisign and Cameroon. The only question is, why this isn't enabled by default.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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
- 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 ]
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)
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?