ICANN Can’t Take Care of Everything

Bruce Young tells a story of an Internet user who gets into trouble because "his" domain name was registered in the name of a web hosting provider that went bankrupt later on...As far as registrars are concerned, ICANN is currently doing its homework on domain name portability. As far as web hosting companies are concerned, though, these suggestions only look appealing at first sight. Upon closer inspection, they wouldn't be good policy... more

Malaysia Reverses Decision on Controversial DNS Redirection Policy

The Malaysian government has backtracked on its recent decision to require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to redirect Domain Name System (DNS) traffic away from third-party servers like Google Public DNS and Cloudflare. more

Facebook vs. Domain Names: Lessons from Cambridge Analytica

The current revelations about Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook data illustrate an important drawback to using a Facebook account as your business' online presence: Facebook knows and sells your customers! Millions of companies - especially small companies and start-ups - rely on a Facebook account for their online presence. On the surface, it seems like a great idea... more

Australian Government Issues New Guidelines to Address 5G Security Concerns in Smart Cities

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has issued a new set of guidelines warning about the security risks posed by the use of 5G technology in so-called Smart Cities. The ASD's concerns align with those of the Five Eyes security alliance, which has warned that the interconnected nature of a fully connected city makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks. more

How to Handle an Outage Like a Pro

In just the last two weeks, there were three major DNS outages between Google, Microsoft Azure, and Fonality. But only one of these companies was able to make even bigger waves with the way they handled their blunder. Fonality, who sells VoIP services and business phone systems, offered a very rare and transparent analysis of their outage. In a detailed statement from Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Valentine, readers were given crucial insight on how to prevent the same mistakes from happening to other companies. more

Balancing Digital Integrity: CENTR Critiques EU’s Insolvency Proposal

CENTR, the leading body representing European national domain registries, has voiced concerns over the European Union's insolvency proposal. The group emphasizes that the current proposal places an undue strain on country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries by demanding excessive data about domain name holders. more

Making IDN gTLDs Attractive and Safe

The primary focus of this article is to illustrate that the Applicant Guidebook is not supplying sufficient protection mechanisms, and creates too high financial barrier for those who are interested in applying for multiple Top-Level Domains (TLDs) that are translations/transliterations of each other and/or of an existing generic Top-Level Domains (tt-gTLDs). more

Huawei’s Very Red World

The map below shows countries working with Huawei 5G in red and pink. As can be seen, Huawei is doing very well in 5G, although it's not as dominant as the colors here suggest. Ericsson is actually close to Huawei in 5G revenue, aided by the ban in the US and Australia. Years ago, Huawei was the price leader in order to break into the European market. more

Google Launch of DNS Service and OpenDNS Reply

Earlier today Google announced the launch of their new DNS service. They're pushing it as part of their "better experience" and "speed" drive that Matt Cutts and Co have been harping on about for the last while. OpenDNS, however, has been offering a similar service for quite some time... So it was quite interesting to read OpenDNS' response to the Google service. more

Call Spoofing: Congress Calls on FCC, Russia and China Answer

It is both amusing and dismaying. Last year, Congress passed Ray Baum's Act telling the FCC to do something about those pesky incoming foreign SPAM calls and texts with the fake callerIDs. The FCC a couple of weeks ago responded with a chest thumping Report and Order claiming it has "extraterritorial jurisdiction" that is does not have, and promising it will do something. Don't hold your breath on that one. more

US Senate Committee Holds Hearing on ICANN’s New TLD Expansion

As previously noted, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation today held a full committee hearing on ICANN's expansion of top level domains (TLDs). The hearing was held to examine the merits and implications of the program and ICANN's efforts to address concerns raised. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new TLDs on January 12, 2012. more

A New Blog About “New gTLDs”

There are many blogs about new gTLDs. Some are interesting, others are not. Some are about domaining in which new gTLDs are included, some are from Law Firms and rather repetitive about the necessity to protect a brand in the Trademark Clearinghouse and how URS is the best (billable) mechanism to protect the brand; some are truly about domain names and remain must-read; very few are about new gTLDs only. more

Internet Governance: Why Africa Should Take the Lead

Recently during an afternoon meeting with a friend of mine, Bob Ochieng, who happens to work for ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Africa Operations, he lamented that at online Internet Governance discussions fora such as CircleID, and 1net.org, there is no serious frequent engagements from African Voices. This got me thinking and I realized that most African Internet Stakeholders would rather use a "wait and see approach" in matters as critical as Internet Governance. more

DNS Resolvers and DNSSEC: Roll Over and Die?

Security is great when all the green lights are shining brightly and everything validates as intended, but what happens when you encounter failure? In this work we examine the behaviour of the DNS when security, in the form of DNSSEC is added, and we look at what happens when things do not happen as intended. What triggered this examination was a sudden increase in the traffic generated by secondary servers for the in-addr.arpa reverse zones in December 2009. more

Where Did “Data Shadow” Come From?

Anyone who works in privacy is familiar with the term "data shadow": the digital record created by our transactions, our travels, our online activities. But where did the phrase come from? Who used it first? A number of authors have attributed it to Alan Westin, whose seminal book Privacy and Freedom (largely a report on the work of the Committee on Science and Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York) set the stage for most modern discussions of privacy.  more