I was surprised, and a bit dismayed, to run across this article in PC Magazine. It seems that the .info Top Level Domain (TLD) has become a haven for spammers and malware artists, to the point where Microsoft Live Messenger is blocking messages that contain the string “.info” in them.
Microsoft claims that there was a “malicious advertising effort” targeting Windows Live Messenger users. The messages had URLs with “either .info or another URL,” and the site they led to asked for the user’s Windows Live user ID and password. If the user complied, everyone on their contact list received the string.
Pretty standard worm stuff. But Microsoft went on: This was not a Microsoft sponsored effort, and in order to prevent the spread of it through our service, instant messages that include the words “.info” and a few additional key words have been blocked. This action may block some safe, reputable sites and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers; however, given the circumstances this action was necessary. We are investigating options to ensure legitimate domains that have “.info” in part of their name and other key words are not blocked and will have an update to share in the near future.
Never mind that there are plenty of perfectly legit .info domains. Like www.mta.info, the site for New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. Or, as another example, www.wist.info, my quotations website.
The problem seems to be promotional policies by groups that manage the .info TLD. By offering .info domains at cheaper prices than .com domains (sometimes even free), it makes it easier for spammers to buy up blocks of them.
The number isn’t huge, but it’s been enough to provide a reputation. Based on a McAfee study released in March:.
The “.info” domain ranked first among generic TLDs for its percentage of risky sites, at 7.5 percent, McAfee said. The domain also hosts many Web sites that send “spammy” e-mail, the vendor said.
SiteAdvisor submits an e-mail address to Web sites and counts how many e-mails are received. Users have a 73.2 percent chance of receiving a spam e-mail by giving their address to a random “.info” site, McAfee said.
The “.com” domain — created in the 1980s — came in second for risk, with 5.5 percent of its Web sites considered questionable, McAfee said.
I’d hate to think that I ended up building WIST in a “bad neighborhood.” I’m not planning on moving the domain any time soon — but I will be watching.
If worse comes to worse, you could create a non *.info domain for your WIST site and create a forwarder so people could get used to it. But that’s not a great solution. I like DOF’s China solution to the problem. In China, when someone breaks a rule they take it very seriously. There was a story of CEO being hung. Imagine if we did the same thing to that spammer that got caught awhile back.
“In other news today apparently Spam has almost dropped off the board completely and people are finding e-mail to be a great form of communication once again…“
If so much spam didn’t come from China, I’d feel better about that idea.