Who owns top level domain names

These form another huge chunk of the internet. So why create a whole new bunch of gTLDs if. The argument is that the internet—or. So many names on. This fascinating blog post from March delves deep into average length and other attributes of domain names.

Hundreds of new gTLDs means hundreds of times as many available second-level domains. It could even mean an end to the increasingly silly names new businesses have to adopt just so they can secure a memorable web address.

Shpoonkle , anyone? Rather than planning extensive consultations about what they should be, this time ICANN allowed the market to decide. Many did. Google applied for gTLDs through a subsidiary. Amazon bid for 76 of them.

We are Donuts. In June , ICANN announced it had received a total of 1, applications for 1, unique domains from about 1, different entities. Of the 1, applications, names are contested by applicants, which in the case of non-trademarked names will be decided by auction.

These become available for anybody to buy and instantly start running on Feb 4. The first seven new Latin-based top level domains follow the next day. But trademark-holders are already allowed to register, and some sites may start going live in a matter of days. Roughly applications have already been approved. Namazi told Quartz that the organization is currently approving applications for new gTLDs at a rate of 20 every week.

That means there will be 1, new ones by the end of this year. For its owner, setting up a generic top-level domain is the online equivalent of opening up a vast—in fact, essentially infinite—tract of previously virgin land for development, except that the real estate in question has been conjured out of thin air. But once the initial investment has been recouped, the profits, in theory at least, can be enormous.

Whoever wins a top-level domain say,. Daniel Negari, a year-old American who made his first fortune selling real estate, is planning to make. By contrast,. A domain on. One on. One of the applicants for. He has made a remarkable success of selling it as a top-level domain for start-ups and as a shorter alternative to. From a cybersecurity perspective, election officials should be aware of tactics used by cyber threat actors CTA s to exploit user familiarity with common TLDs when accessing links in emails and elsewhere.

CTAs often attempt to spoof or typosquat trusted domains to socially engineer victims into interacting with a fraudulent website to steal sensitive information or infect victims with malware. These typosquatted or spoofed domains seek to exploit user oversight through deliberately creating misleading domains wherein the true TLD is hard to identify at first glance.

CTAs may also try to establish legitimacy by registering domains with country-specific TLDs, such as ". As a result, ccTLDs are not a reliable indicator of country of origin. Using these tactics, techniques, and procedures in combination, CTAs increase the likelihood of successfully carrying out a successful attack. Election officials should assess their current web presence to identify their TLD and determine what may be appropriate for their organization.

For more information on how to register a ". In addition, election offices should register or purchase common gTLD variations of their domain to help prevent CTAs from typosquatting a fraudulent replica of the election office domain under a different, but common domain suffix e. Lastly, election office staff should make it a practice to closely examine domains before clicking a link, as the subtle changes in malicious domains are most often only noticeable upon close inspection.

As a general rule, users should navigate to the link by searching for it, instead of following a link or typing the link directly into the address bar.

It is intended to provide EI-ISAC members with a working understanding of common technical topics in the cybersecurity industry.

You can view them all at the IANA website. The sTLD group contains TLDs that are sponsored by a specific entity, which could be a business, government, or other groups.

A partial list of common examples is:. Some enforce residency restrictions in order to purchase a domain in that area, while others are public and can be purchased by people from anywhere in the world.

For example, the. However, despite the tech-sounding name,. Side note — we would not recommend purchasing a. In addition to helping you tell human visitors what country your website serves, Google can use ccTLDs to help geotarget your site.

For example:. Tired of slow pages and low SEO rankings? At Kinsta we use state-of-the-art technology and speed obsessive architecture to provide blazing fast performances. Check out our hosting plans. In addition to the. The general idea is that having all these different TLDs can help you communicate information about your website through your domain name. There are actually two different WordPress sites , which has been a source of eternal confusion for new WordPress users.

Each has a different TLD, which actually does a pretty good job of indicating what the site is about:.