I felt a little sad reading this --- I and several people I know used to host personal websites (or projects, or hackathon products) on various .tk and .ml domains, because it was free and we were...
I felt a little sad reading this --- I and several people I know used to host personal websites (or projects, or hackathon products) on various .tk and .ml domains, because it was free and we were broke students.
I guess that makes me a crook?
“It was obvious from the start that this was not going to turn out well,” says Levine, coauthor of The Internet for Dummies. “The only people who want those domains are crooks.”
I'm a bit confused by another thing: the article says that Freenom provides a domain "in exchange for having advertisements hosted on their websites", but I don't remember ever being asked to host ads, nor did I notice any when visiting my own sites. My impression was they get revenue by selling 10-year plans so that users avoid the trouble of reregistering their free domain during a tight two-week window every year.
It makes sense that TLD providers should also be responsible for policing the sites hosted there, and it seems like Freenom didn't do a good enough job. But it felt very weird seeing Freenom painted as a huge villain here when I thought for the longest time that they were great.
I guess it's gonna be a bit more expensive to be an indie developer from now on.
If you give the guy who was behind it the benefit of the doubt, I think that was the original intended use and to an extent what he sold that country on. The way the article explains it makes it...
I felt a little sad reading this --- I and several people I know used to host personal websites (or projects, or hackathon products) on various .tk and .ml domains, because it was free and we were broke students.
I guess that makes me a crook?
If you give the guy who was behind it the benefit of the doubt, I think that was the original intended use and to an extent what he sold that country on. The way the article explains it makes it sound like there wasn't a detailed conversation to the effect that they really didn't understand the full scope, but presumably as anyone would think, it would be more innocent usage and not what it ended up being.
So I don't think it makes anyone using it that way a crook, that's what they hoped the usage would be, ideally if that's all anyone used it for then it would have been a great success for them, and thus no one stealing from them or causing reputational harm.
I also had a .tk once just to mess around, to build an understanding of setting up a website. I don't remember the ads either, perhaps I had an adblocker or something or just forgot as it was a long time ago.
I could believe this person who made this deal with that country might have gone in with intentions that it wouldn't have been full of scams etc., but once the money starts rolling in, intentions and ethics end up going out the window. Of course as the article describes, I don't think the country reps knew better, they were happy to get the money but I doubt they were aware of the possibility of misuse in the way it came to be. The guy operating the domain on their behalf though, obviously at some point he knew, but I find it easy to believe that there was self serving but not malicious intentions to begin with.
My experience with news articles generally is that they tend to have significant errors. Journalists are generalists and are pressed for time to meet deadlines. I suspect that their overall point...
My experience with news articles generally is that they tend to have significant errors. Journalists are generalists and are pressed for time to meet deadlines.
I suspect that their overall point that many cyber criminals used this domain is accurate however.
I'm glad you found this resource when you needed it.
I felt a little sad reading this --- I and several people I know used to host personal websites (or projects, or hackathon products) on various .tk and .ml domains, because it was free and we were broke students.
I guess that makes me a crook?
I'm a bit confused by another thing: the article says that Freenom provides a domain "in exchange for having advertisements hosted on their websites", but I don't remember ever being asked to host ads, nor did I notice any when visiting my own sites. My impression was they get revenue by selling 10-year plans so that users avoid the trouble of reregistering their free domain during a tight two-week window every year.
It makes sense that TLD providers should also be responsible for policing the sites hosted there, and it seems like Freenom didn't do a good enough job. But it felt very weird seeing Freenom painted as a huge villain here when I thought for the longest time that they were great.
I guess it's gonna be a bit more expensive to be an indie developer from now on.
If you give the guy who was behind it the benefit of the doubt, I think that was the original intended use and to an extent what he sold that country on. The way the article explains it makes it sound like there wasn't a detailed conversation to the effect that they really didn't understand the full scope, but presumably as anyone would think, it would be more innocent usage and not what it ended up being.
So I don't think it makes anyone using it that way a crook, that's what they hoped the usage would be, ideally if that's all anyone used it for then it would have been a great success for them, and thus no one stealing from them or causing reputational harm.
I also had a .tk once just to mess around, to build an understanding of setting up a website. I don't remember the ads either, perhaps I had an adblocker or something or just forgot as it was a long time ago.
I could believe this person who made this deal with that country might have gone in with intentions that it wouldn't have been full of scams etc., but once the money starts rolling in, intentions and ethics end up going out the window. Of course as the article describes, I don't think the country reps knew better, they were happy to get the money but I doubt they were aware of the possibility of misuse in the way it came to be. The guy operating the domain on their behalf though, obviously at some point he knew, but I find it easy to believe that there was self serving but not malicious intentions to begin with.
My experience with news articles generally is that they tend to have significant errors. Journalists are generalists and are pressed for time to meet deadlines.
I suspect that their overall point that many cyber criminals used this domain is accurate however.
I'm glad you found this resource when you needed it.
I definitely remember ads on some of my old .tk websites. Websites would be in an iframe with an ad frame wrapped around.