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The XXX-piring Namespace - More Semantic Attacks
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A bit of follow-up. Perhaps being pressed for time, I mistakenly typed:that users time in their URL line which should read:that users type in their URL line I also neglected to point out another angle. At least as far back as last February Declan McCullagh and USA Today were reporting that Osama bin Laden and other terrorist organizations were using steganograpy, which is a method for hiding files within other files, for example a text file within a picture, perhaps on a porn site. Such a choice would make good sense, even with access to the server logs it would be difficult to decipher which hits on such high trafficked sites might be more meaningful. And just to bring my two recent submissions into some kind of closure, Bruce Shneier, from whom I borrowed the phrase semantic attacks, isn't very optimistic about the ability to stop such traffic. -g
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Relax...the adult industry has been using similar tactics with toll-free phone numbers for years...this is nothing new.
If companies would pay their bills ONTIME they wouldn't lose their domains and thus wouldn't have such problems...Right?
And the most important aspect being missed here is the fact that adult oriented companies actually make money using such tactics...NOW WHY IS THAT?? Think about it for a second...if one intends to reach website "company.com" and they somehow are redirected to "nudepixs.com" instead, one would expect they would LEAVE and correct their mistake...right? But it turns out that some people when misdirected for whatever reason, instead of leaving, they will actually whip out their credit card and SPEND MONEY on a website they didn't even intend to reach...and NO ONE FORCED them to do that. Right?
I think it's high time for people to assume responsibility for their own actions - namely, renewing their domains on time...and lastly, why let expired domains go unused anyways...the adult industry helps maximize economy by recycling domains which helps registrars stay in business and in turn reduces the need to add more TLDs. A win win situation :-)
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Ron's exactly right ... some randomly dialed 800 numbers held by adult companies convert as high as 5% or more to paid customers. (The direct response benchmark for successful *targeted* campaigns, is 2%.)
Judith
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Ron_Bennett writes:Relax...the adult industry has been using similar tactics with toll-free phone numbers for years I fail to see how a toll-free number equates to a screen full of explicit porn, and if the adult industry is using toll-free numbers previously targetted at and intended for children I don't think that is anything to relax about either.
If companies would pay their bills ONTIME they wouldn't lose their domains and thus wouldn't have such problems...Right? Wrong. Did you actually read my submission? Some of these people, and they aren't all companies, lost their names through no fault of their own. Have you never had a problem with a registrar? As some of the proposals for handling expired names would place a higher premium on them than if they were simply renewed, registrars have a built-in financial incentive to allow them to expire. if one intends to reach website "company.com" and they somehow are redirected to "nudepixs.com" instead, one would expect they would LEAVE and correct their mistake...right? Wrong again, if they're mousetrapped and/or have multiple spawned popups, which is the norm. Did you even read my submission? But it turns out that some people when misdirected for whatever reason, instead of leaving, they will actually whip out their credit card and SPEND MONEY on a website they didn't even intend to reach...and NO ONE FORCED them to do that. Right? Right, no one forced the children hit with this exploit to whip out their credit card. This is disingenuous at best. why let expired domains go unused anyways Um, how about because they're someone's intellectual property? I'm not a fan of too much of intellectual property rights being mapped to domain names, but what we're talking about here is not just the name. They've been submitted to search engines, are linked to, bookmarked, added to email address books, et cetera, with a certain intention, they are then hijacked for a different intention. It wouldn't be rocket science to automate a search on about to be expired domains, check their links in, check their search engine rankings, check their hits, and then go for the most popular names, I don't doubt it is being done already. But to then re-register that name based on its popularity rather than its intent, and to use that name to push pornography,
at best uncaring whether it is seen by children, at worst targetting them, well, that was not the way the DNS was intended to work. I notice that snapnames, which had another of the proposals for handling expired names, has a hot 100 list of expired names. Going to many of them one finds the same technique in play, though they don't list adult domains. Someone going to what was once one site is now another. Snapnames also mentions in their recent newsletter that some people register names for only 4 or 5 days and use them for affiliate clickthru money and then cancel them without penalty. That snapnames or afternic should be in charge of expiring names will just make more of a mess of the DNS. ...the adult industry helps maximize economy by recycling domains which helps registrars stay in business and in turn reduces the need to add more TLDs. A win win situation Most people don't win by having porn pushed at them through misrepresentation, most people don't win by having fewer TLDs. There are more important things than maximizing profits for registrars or porn merchants. Ron, I often appreciate your posts here and elsewhere, but this is just so wrongheaded I can't believe it. BTW, Bruce Schneier, from whom I took the term semantic attacks, and whose name I mis-spelled, will be a featured speaker at MdR. -g
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At least one more expiring domain becomes a porn site, and as the prior owner let numerous desirable names expire, it might not be the only one. Quite an interesting article on that and other namespace sillyness here. -g
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An article and user comments on this from Afternic. -g
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Anon writes: Why is it the public's responsibility to protect other people's children from porn? Why is it the public's responsibility to provide schooling, crossing guards, crosswalks, stop signs, or for that matter to protect children from predators? Is that all a waste of your tax dollars? I say it is the parent's responsibility to monitor this stuff. I couldn't agree more that parents need to be involved. My own then pre-teen children were writing code and hacking back when there were almost no other children to be found online. They still needed to be monitored and made cyberstreetwise as there were already pedophiles online who pretended to be children. But leaving it entirely up to parents just doesn't work, we're dealing with non-tech savvy parents monitoring non-tech savvy children to protect them from tech-savvy predators. Buy filtering software and use it! There are many pieces of software that can filter URLS, eliminate pop-up ads, and ad banners And there is counter-software to defeat that. I don't care for filtering software, for a number of reasons, here's a few. And as my submission dealt in part with porn sites buying up and using previously childfriendly URLs (did you even read it?) filtering based on URLs isn't just exceedingly dumb, it is now actually counter-productive, perhaps that is one reason such names are being bought.
If you are a religious fanatic and don't want your kids exposed to ANYTHING -- take away their computer. It is a safe bet that the Amish don't have problems like this in their house. Actually you'd lose that bet, there are Amish online. Perhaps the Taliban would be a better example, perhaps not. FWIW, my opposition to this use of expired names has nothing to do with religion.
I have yet to see evidence that pornography in general is "harmful" to anyone. When I was a young kid I stumbled on my dad's Playboys There is considerable research about the effects of pornography on children, much of it negative, much of it available online. Playboy style porn is far from the worst, though I don't think Playboy should market to children either, any more than the tobacco companies. But I guess that should be left to the parents too, every image on TV, movies, video games, comic books, billboards, is the sole responsibility of the parent to monitor? Guess your father's monitoring left a bit to be desired. There are certain images that transcend my ability to properly process them, a horror is left etched on my mind. Examples include the Nazi death camps, the Zapruder freeze frames, the WTC on September 11. Another is a porn site, apparently from an orphanage in what used to be the Soviet Union, of emaciated children, many of them pre-teen, engaged in posed, though real and explicit, sexual acts. If this can sear the mind of an adult one cannot imagine what it might do to a child. Sorry, the internet is not your father's Playboy. -g
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