How does FreeNom know how much traffic your domain is getting, especially if you've set up your own DNS servers (which you can do on free domains)?
There are no particulars here and I am very curious to know how this popped up.
Their DNS servers will collect all top-level DNS requests. When someone visits a given website, the TLD is queried for the authoritive nameservers for the domain if that information hasn't been cached yet. In practice, every ISP will end up sending a DNS request every once in a while when the cache expires. When loads of DNS requests come in from all over the world, you could flag a domain as high-traffic or high-value.
[0]: ---
11.2. Renewal
As long as you have remained in compliance with each of the terms of this Agreement from the date you agreed to be bound by this Agreement, including without limitation the minimum use requirements set forth in Section 10.1, we may elect in our sole discretion to (i) allow you to upgrade to the Paid Service at the prevailing applicable rate, (ii) automatically renew this Agreement for a term, determined by Freenom, from such date (the "Renewal Period") and (iii) continue providing you with FREE DOMAIN subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement (including a renewal of the registration of the domain name provided to you in connection with FREE DOMAIN).
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To reach your DNS you have to go through the TLD. On free domains, the TTL is set to 300 seconds (or 60 seconds).
So to reach your ns1.example.com, it goes through {a,b,c,d}.ns.tk first and refers to ns1.example.com.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tk
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ga
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cf
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.gq
[4]: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130407005038/en/Mal...
Of course, such arrangements are not very reliable. The relationship between a sovereign entity and an individual, or even a small corporation, is unbalanced. The rules of the game are set by one party, and varied at their whim. "But that's not fair" might work in countries that pride themselves on fairness, such as the United States of America (though don't count on it) but it won't get you very far in Equatorial Guinea.
If these arrangements annoy the other sovereign entities, they might do something about it. For example, the Paris MOU (and subsequently similar Port State Control rules in much of the developed world) - is what happened when European states were annoyed that places like Panama were not pulling their weight when it came to safety and employment standards on commercial shipping, and operated Open Registers (which the Europeans argued were in fact mere "Flags of Convenience") to earn money without spending that money where it was needed.
But if they just annoy you, a mere individual with no rights on the world stage at all, you can go whistle. You are not even eligible to complain to most of the bodies that claim jurisdiction over sovereign entities, another sovereign entity would need to take up the complaint.
a.ns.cf has address 185.21.168.17
a.ns.gq has address 185.21.168.65
a.ns.ml has address 185.21.168.1
a.ns.ga has address 185.21.168.49
% Abuse contact for '185.21.168.0 - 185.21.168.15' is 'abuse@freenom.com'
% Abuse contact for '185.21.168.16 - 185.21.168.31' is 'abuse@freenom.com'
..and so on
Ah, that's the piece I was missing. I get how DNS works but I hadn't fathomed that FreeNom was the root for those TLDs they handle.
Still curious how / if / when they tell you about the thresholds.
Fortunately none of the domains I have registered there are used for anything important but it does hurt if someone does use one they register for something important.
In fact most of my domains I have upgraded to paid registrations.
I’d love to see these allegedly high traffic domains that were just taken and sold to 3rd parties. My guess is if there is any truth to the complain the free registration expired and the domain was scooped up.