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The Curious Correlation Between .biz Domains, Bad Whois Data, and Spam

12/3/2003

· more and more spammers selecting .biz domains for spamvertised URLs, and
· more and more sites using the presence of a .biz URL as a spam filtering criterion.

For example, if you use the default rules distributed with SpamAssasssin, the mere presence of a .biz top-level domain URL in a message is currently worth 0.784 points (toward a total of 3.0 points typically required for a message to get flagged as spam).

ICANN and NeuLevel really need to take affirmative steps to clean up and reclaim .biz before that TLD ends up getting completely written off by material sections of the Internet, to the detriment of legitimate .biz domain name registrants. Auditing all existing .biz whois data for accuracy, and disabling .biz domains demonstrably used in conjunction with spam will be key first steps in that effort.

***

As usual, J'e's made some good points about what he's discovered. According to the ICANN Web site, the NeuLevel public contact for the generic Top Level Domain ".biz" is: Barbara Blackwell, Manager, Public Relations, NeuLevel, +1 202 533 2730, Fax: +1 202 533 2976, http://www.nic.biz. However, although that phone number works, she's no longer there. I wonder who I should report that to?


About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.

Cite this Site

Terry Calhoun, "The Curious Correlation Between .biz Domains, Bad Whois Data, and Spam ," Campus Technology, 12/3/2003, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=39629

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