Cameroon Typo-Squats all of .com 402
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?"
The fix is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Not an issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This story is complete bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The "so what" is that when you try to go to a non-existent domain, you should get a name resolution failure. That way, you know that you have an error. The screws that up.
Re:Not an issue. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:.cm != .com (Score:1, Insightful)
who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The fix is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This story is complete bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:correct solution (that will never fly)... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The fix is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Once upon a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This story is complete bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue isn't people who want to go to aaa.cm accidently typing aab.cm, it's people wanting to go to aaa.com and forgetting the 'o'.
I think you are missing the point. The owner of, say, neimanmarcus.com would be a victim of typosquatting if someone else took the domain name niemanmarcus.com, because someone typing in the latter spelling would really be deceived if it went to the wrong page. He could look carefully at what he typed and think, "yes, niemanmarcus.com, that's right." But if you type neimanmarcus.cm, the mistake is obvious when you look again.
When trying to allow for users' mistakes, at some point you have to draw a line. Beyond a certain point, the user has to take responsibility to type what he or she means. For example, philips.com [philips.com] and phillips.com [phillips.com] are different domains. Neither is typosquatting; the user has to get it right. Top-level country domains are a much clearer case than that.
Re:There's typos, and then there's THAT (Score:2, Insightful)
<sarcasm>Yeah! How dare they have their country code as a typo-squat of
Re:The fix is easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's typos, and then there's THAT (Score:2, Insightful)
They domain-squatted
They may be typo-squatting
--
(*)Cameroon Express - don't leave home without it!.
Re:This story is complete bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This story is complete bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The definition of typo-squatting (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Smart move. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:correct solution (that will never fly)... (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact is, we still live in a world with nations. Where you physically exist is still relevant. You can't escape that. Different laws apply in different places, even with the internet.
If your business/organization spans multiple countries, or if the concept of "nation" isn't really applicable to what you're trying to do, then be a .com.int or .org.int instead.
Drop nation-ambiguous TLDs. Let each country's "technical authority" decide which 2LDs it will have. Then we won't get bizarre junk like .aero, etc. Current ambiguous URLs (e.g. mcdonalds.com) could result in a HTTP 300 code with a list of choices (e.g. mcdonalds.com.int, mcdonalds.com.ac, mcdonalds.com.ad, ..., mcdonalds.com.zw). This would remind many people that there is a world outside their own borders, and I believe that's a good thing. Take a little pride in your homeland; there's nothing wrong with that.
Re:There's typos, and then there's THAT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad Article Title - Bad Summary Title (Score:2, Insightful)
That constitutes 'typo-squatting'
Re:Not an issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a guess, but maybe they want to put an end to people costing them money when random folks screw up and ding the wrong TLD server?
Re:Smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, although by using terms like "good guys" and "god-forsaken" you're in danger of being as irrational and downright inaccurate as the post you reply to.
Re:The fix is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't a better solution be to redirect *.om and *.cm to the .com equivalent?
What happens if the typo wasn't in the TLD? They'll then get redirected to a site they didn't ask for instead of recieving a more appropriate "Not Found" message. What happens to systems that rely on DNS returning those "not found" messages? There's also the question of US-bias. There are other TLDs that could be mistyped to produce the ones mentioned. If you want your typos to be automatically translated into what the system thinks you *might* have meant then that should happen at the application level (i.e. your web browser) so that users have a choice. It shouldn't be built into DNS.Re:Smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smart move. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we should instead assume that they can do no wrong because they aren't anglo-saxon Christians.
The idea, implied in your post, that all anglo-saxon Christians are racists against all other people is racist in itself. But of course that is okay, since it is fashinable to bash anglo-saxon Christians right now, just as it was once fashionable to bash negros, judes, redskins, gooks, insert deragatory racial group term of your choice here.
After all, no one who isn't anglo-saxon Christian couldn't possibly do anything to deserve criticism. It's all just a plot of White Supremacists, fighting for control with the Elders of Zion and the Freemasons. Right ?
And for the record: I know nothing about Cameroon, besides a quick Wikipedia lookup, and can't say whether their government is dictatorial or not. I am simply commenting on your idiotic, racist assumption that any criticism is motivated by racism.
Re:The fix is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Even worse. That would have the effect of blocking all the legitimate .cm amd .om (Oman) sites. Why worry at all? If someone makes a typo and gets a generic ad page it's hardly a disaster.
Re:Not an issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're mistaken -- all that that requirement means is that there must be an option in the menus of an interactive GUI application to display copyright information (as in "Help / About"). See for yourself [fsf.org]:
Emphasis is mine.
Re:Smart move. (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, because as we all know, anglo-saxon Christians are currently enslaved and forced to pick cotton, being forced into death camps and gas chambers, pushed off their land and forced to live on reservations, stuffed into small container vessels and forced to work in restaurants and laundries and railroads for virtually no pay. Anglo-saxon Christians certainly DON'T represent one of the most destructive, violent, imperialistic forces on the planet for the past few centuries. My goodness no. Anglo-saxon Christians are a tiny, persecuted minority who suffer constant abuse and indignities at the hands of the heathen majority.
Poor innocent little anglo-saxon Christians.
Re:Smart move. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you think that debt relief is the answer to all of Africa's problems, you are wrong. The problem is that corrupt governments do all that they can to stay in power, at the expense of the rest of society.
PS If you think there is a parallel to George Bush in all of this. *News Flash* You are a moron who has no idea what real corruption is.
Re:Bad Article Title - Bad Summary Title (Score:5, Insightful)
If one were to register micosoft.com, mirosoft.com, and mcrosoft.com, that would be typo-squatting on Microsoft.com, no?
In adding a redirect for .cm, with a wildcard redirect for all nonregistered entries, it seems that Cameroon is typo squatting on a TLD. It's the same idea as the Verisign deal, it's just that this one is doing it on a tld that could easily be a typo for .com. Why could this not be classified as being both a Sitefinder-type redirect, and a TLD typo squat?
It seems to me that rather than being bullshit, the headline is getting to the meat of the story.