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Riskiest Web Domains To Visit
wiredmikey writes "According to a report released today, .COM is the riskiest top-level domain, the riskiest country domain is Vietnam (.VN). Japan's .JP ranks as the safest country domain for the second year in a row and TRAVEL as the safest overall domain. It's interesting to note that .JP (currently $89.99 at GoDaddy) and .TRAVEL ($89.99 at Moniker) domains are also some of the most expensive domains. Are cybercriminals getting cheap with other people's credit cards? Or do the higher price make it more risky?"
...obviously means scammers, hackers, etc can't buy as many of them, so they're going to go for the cheapies.
This is quite possibly the most pointless report ever compiled.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
We could call it .MALWARE or .INFECTED or .BADSTUFFINSTALLEDONYOURCOMPUTER. All the bad stuff would be relegated to this new domain.
Please note that my idea is no less insightful than the referenced article which is very insightful.
Computers can be repaired, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
How do you measure risk?
If a domain is 100% infected with software that cleans up your inbox for you more "risky" than one 50% infected with software that goes and registers you as a sex offender, steals your credit card numbers and posts your porn habits on the web?
Since ICANN has already committed to start selling gTLDs to anyone with enough money.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The best way to increase profit is by reducing cost.
Buying a domain for $90 dollars is far more expensive than a domain for $5-10 bucks.
Also, people are used to seeing ".com" addresses. .TRAVEL, et al are still relatively new.
We don't live in Shouldland.
It isn't the $89.99, but the $89.99 times 1000 junk domains.
Plus different TLD operators have different policies: some actually police who can register, requiring that the perp put some effort into pretending to be eligible to use them. .COM obviously does not.
There's also the factor that nobody has ever heard of .TRAVEL (so it looks bogus), but .COM is familiar and friendly-looking.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
My country domain (Bulgaria - bg) costs 130$ and only one company can sell is - register.bg. For many years we all have complained about this monopoly, there was many petitions and stuff (we won in some way - now there`re two resellers working for register.bg) but this way has some advantages for example:
1. No one could register government like domains - president.bg and so on .bg domain, if someone try to use it for illegal purpuses register.bg will wipe the domain and file official complain to the police. .bg, they get to choose from yourname.[a-z].bg and you cannot register viagra.a.bg it got to be your real name(you can if your name is Viagra :D )
2. If you want to register company name. google.bg for example, you have to provide official registration papers for the company
3. There isn`t even one single spam or other related issue with
4. Individuals cannot register
It is in some way very restrictive and the bureaucracy is a big pain, but the country domain name is important and if someone is misusing it everyone blame the country.
I work in online advertising, specifically I look after a major UK publisher's adservers/ad-delivery. We use the following to keep an eye on identified malware delivering domains:
http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/mdl.php
http://www.malwaredomains.com/
http://www.malwareurl.com/
http://www.anti-malvertising.com/
TIME.TRAVEL is finally safe to visit? I'm not buying it.
It is more expensive to register domains on a "premium" TLD. Since fewer domains are registered on the TLDs, there will be fewer used by spammers.
Because people black list domains used by spammers; URI-based blacklists, and RHS blacklists that blacklist by domain name. Spam filters start to recognize them, in any case.
So spammers register thousands of domains at the cheapest prices available (probably using stolen cards or multiple shell companies)
It follows, that spam might be reduced, with greater costs or qualifications to register a domain.
I for one would be in favor of a "paper" requirement.
ICANN should require that every domain have a primary 'contact address' verified by the registrar that is listed in public WHOIS.
ICANN should require registrars to verify BY PAPER certified+restricted mail to each new primary contact address, which must be an address in a country the registrar does business in, and may not be a PO Box or forwarded address.
The registrant should be required to SIGN a document mailed, and send it back, before the domain can be placed in the zone. And the signature must match the signature on the mail slip.
The slip signed must include a statement agreeing to the ICANN policies, and certifying that the signer is the principal, and the address provided belongs to the principal who owns the domain, and not a proxy, agent, or designee.
And from then on, that 'contact information' can be used by the owner of THAT account to designate as the org contact for domains registered or transferred. Using a different contact for a domain, requiring going through verification again.
For a minor inconvenience, spammers could be stopped.
Risk of what? Risk of "falling in" and coming out of your trance 3 hours later with 20 new browser tabs open? tvtropes and wikipedia are both .orgs, so I bet .org is the riskiest TLD.
It's pretty funny: even if you RTFA it doesn't really say what the risk is. The fact that they quote McAfee implies that they're talking about a risk of Windows users deciding to download and install malware from websites, but this isn't actually stated.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I would of thought .gov would be the safest domain.
They can be hacked or host 3th party content (ADs?!)
OH NOES!!! Not the dreaded thirth party content!
Sorry, I couldn't help it. I'll probably fulfill Muphrey's law in some way with this post anyway.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
HTTPS certs don't verify that the site is safe. They only verify that you're transmitting information to the specified site, and that only the specified site can read it. There's no guarantee that the site you're communicating with won't contain malware. Actually, the fact that they have a cert may make it easier for them to install malware since they can send you signed active X controls, and other great things.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There is a difference between registering a domain name and paying for hosting. If you paid $56 to register a .com domain, you got ripped off. If you paid $56 for a year of hosting, you got a great deal...
Le français vous intéresse?
3. There isn`t even one single spam or other related issue with .bg domain, if someone try to use it for illegal purpuses register.bg will wipe the domain and file official complain to the police.
So, your website gets hacked and a page is uploaded which delivers malware to visitors. It wasn't your fault, you've kept it patched and backup the logs, but the hackers had a 0-day in their toolkit.
So now YOU lose your domain and go to jail? Nice system you got there.
With a massive and diverse category like a top-level domain, the only statement you can make is "56% of malicious domains are .com"
Concluding, from this, that ".com is the riskiest domain" is like saying "people with long hair are the least likely to murder you" based on how many murders are committed by people with long hair. Actually, it fails on two counts: Firstly, 56% of malicious domains end in .com because most domains do. A better measure would be the relative percentage of malicious domains for a given TLD.
Even that statistic would only say anything about "risk" if you randomly picked a domain under the .com TLD (with perfectly equal chances for each). People don't use the internet like that; they use it by following links from popular sites to other popular sites. One of those neat little obvious-in-hindsight discoveries; there was a small search engine who made it big by using that.
Which they aren't doing already?
Just because one approach wouldn't stop all forms of spam, doesn't mean it couldn't significantly impact spam overall by eliminating one or more vectors.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.