DNS Belgium have published an interview with a student whose Master’s thesis was on detecting fake web shops in the .be domain with machine learning.
The interview with Senne Batsleer outlines the aim of his thesis: improve the detection of fake web shops in the .be zone. DNS Belgium note they have been tracking fake web shops using artificial intelligence since 2019. In that time they have taken more than 3,900 domain names of fake web shops offline.
In the interview Batsleer outlines his method of tracking down fake web shops and how successful it was. To read the interview in full, go to: https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en/news/fake-webshops
Afnic Reappointed .FR Registry For 5 More Years
The French ccTLD registry Afnic has been reappointed for five more years, with the next contract to begin on 1 July 2022.
In announcing they had won the contract again, Afnic state the precise terms and conditions for implementing their proposals for the management and development of .fr are currently being drafted as part of a new agreement. In addition to .fr, Afnic also manages the .re (Reunion Island), .pm (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), .tf (French Southern and Antarctic Territories), .wf (Wallis and Futuna) and .yt (Mayotte) French Overseas ccTLDs.
.NL Keeps Its COVID Bump
One year on from the boost in registrations that resulted from the COVID pandemic, the Dutch ccTLD registry notes businesses that registered .nl domain names to either go online for the first time or for new business ideas have generally renewed their domain names one year on. In their announcement, SIDN say many expected a cancellation surge twelve months on from last year’s registration surge. But that didn’t materialise.
Not only did businesses keep their domain names, summer is also often a quiet period. But summer 2021 wasn’t a quiet period for new .nl domain name registrations. Combined with the end of lockdowns SIDN were braced for a downturn, but possibly, in part at least, the poor summer meant there was not the usual lull in registrations during the holiday period.
SIDN though don’t expect significant growth to continue as with 6.2 million .nl domain names, they see their market as largely saturated and don’t anticipate substantial further growth. And certainly not if the economic climate deteriorates.
.PY Celebrates 30th Birthday
9 September marked the 30th anniversary of the delegation of Paraguay’s ccTLD .PY. Between 1980 and 1990, Paraguay relied solely on e-mail to exchange information with other networks.
The National Computer Center (CNC) was the first institution to offer this service to a limited number of users. In 1991, the .PY domain was delegated by IANA and, finally, in 1993 the effective use of domains in NIC.PY began.
There are currently around 25,600 active .py domains. NIC.PY is in the process of updating its technological infrastructure to provide greater support and sustenance to its services. For example, it has established an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) at its facilities to improve response times to DNS queries. Also, NIC .PY has been one of the organisations selected to install an Anycast copy of the Internet “I” root server in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Among the main projects in the last few years, NIC.PY is in the process of adopting internationalised characters, so that .PY domains can also contain Spanish and Guarani characters. They are also beginning the technical implementation work for the introduction of security extensions for .PY (DNSSEC) and the development of new tools to enable more versatile management of all .PY domains.
.РФ Photo Contest
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ is now accepting photos for the Фотодомен.РФ national contest.
The contest calls for photographs in five categories – nature, delicious, cities, business and fashion – with each photo required to show a .РФ domain name with a working website. Entries close on 20 November and more information can be found at фотодомен.рф with all information in Cyrillic.
Swedish Regulator Ends Supervision of .SE Registry
The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) announced it was ending its supervision of how Internetstiftelsen (Internet Foundation), the .se ccTLD registry, manages the technical operation of the registry.
In a statement PTS said they “examined how the Internet Foundation manages the technical operation of the top-level domain based on the requirements and regulations contained in the Top-Level Domain Act. PTS believes that the Internet Foundation has been able to demonstrate that the work is done in a satisfactory way, with appropriate procedures.”
“A further indication that the operation of the TLD is functioning satisfactorily is that the Internet Foundation has not suffered any incident that has affected the availability and/or accuracy of the information in the name servers over the last five years. Further, the traffic between the name servers and the internet and the protection of the data in the TL have not been affected by any incident during the same period.”
“PTS therefore terminates its supervision.”
Tucows Adds UNR To Its Stable
Tucows, who claim to be the world’s largest wholesale domain registrar, has purchased UNR (Uniregistry) Corp.’s registry platform service. Tucows believe this newly added platform technology will complement Tucows’ existing reseller and retail domain services.
In addition to acquiring UNR’s registry platform service, Tucows will add 10 veteran industry experts to the company. With over 150 years of combined experience, these expert engineers and business leaders will be vital additions to Tucows’ expanding team.
“A critical piece of this deal with UNR is the ability to welcome their technical team to Tucows,” said David Woroch, Executive Vice President at Tucows. “With experience spanning over two decades, they are a very strong team with deep competency in the domain name industry. They have built and operated multiple domain and DNS platforms, and we intend to leverage and integrate their expertise across all of our domain business.”
“While I am slowly getting out of the industry, it’s important to me to know that my businesses are being left in the best hands,” said Frank Schilling, CEO and founder of UNR Corp. “Over the past 20 years it’s been an honour to work with Tucows and I’m thrilled to see our registry platform and technical team join their company.”