[1] https://www.hostinger.com/free-domain one example
[2] Any regular domain purchased from a registrar. You simply pay and get the domain with no further identity validation required.
The value is in the way the domain owner participates online and what kind of reputation they build. There are many old-school communities where I recognize the handles of extremely knowledgeable, friendly, helpful people and I have no idea what their real names are.
Imagine if the well earned reputations of high quality participants were transferable across online communities by using a domain as global handle.
2. Don't utilize a domain that is shared by lots of people. There is also lots of DNS tricks (TXT records) to "pin" a user to a domain or whatever. If the domain is shared (for example a company website), you just add a TXT record denoting what private key is allowed to do things. Heck you could setup fine grained permissions per key via txt records.
2. Yes they can expire and that situation is detectable. How is this any different than twitter or another service allowing re-use of a deleted username?
Twitter allowing reuse of deleted usernames is completely different than an existing domain that is used as a identity credential to represent different people over time.
This thread is not about whether domains can represent properties on the Internet but whether domains are valid for identification purposes of people as login credentials. They aren't valid, because a domain doesn't uniquely represent a person.
The resource records would live underneath registry.arpa, which has delegations that correspond to delegations at the DNS root; so to find out if example.com has changed, you can query:
$ delv example.com.registry.arpa OWNER
example.com.registry.arpa. 3660 IN OWNER "MEpnFkIk4sKW_oLPEl-R7WxFSAnWvgZnLYmRtn-3BkY"
An interesting related thing is the approach adopted by iSCSI, which constructs iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN)s by qualifying the domain name with the dates of registration.
So iqn.2003-05.com.example is a different identity to iqn.2021-01.com.example.
I think we should make some new TLDs that come with some validation guarantees. Ie john-doe.nation.citizen is always a person who has an Id with the same “John Doe” issued by some government. The registrar is responsible for validating that. Once issues the domain is never revoked- it’s yours forever, even after death. Maybe you subscribe to something for extra features, but the core identity can’t be recycled.
People don’t always want really strong ID like that though. So make other TLDs for other categories and give them different validation rules. Like .human could have some kind of biometric ID but no name. .blob could be a free for all, whatever.
All government agencies would have a verified .gov domain.
States have access to .gov domains
hell, My local town has a .gov domain.
States have access to domains like ca.us, schools in states have access to k12.ca.us domains.
I guess States could offer domains like, person.county.town.state.us but what a mouthful. Or maybe person.citizen.state.us but doesn't seem ideal either.
I guess you could have a verified TLD so you can have individual domains like johndoe.verified... but it takes away from the domain being linked back to my website. Sure I could set up a redirect but boy that's starting to get complicated.
I think domains are a fine barrier for entry for vanity handles. Current domain registers could offer their own verification services where they can include the verification in the whois information.
If Joerogan.biz doesn't come back with some kind of verification string inside then it's not Joe's domain. That string could be a pubkey and services could allow for either encrypted posting or including an encrypted string that verifys against the domains whois information.
Or that pubkey could be stored as a txt record in the domain.
That kind of thing is sometimes suggested as a solution to reduce online disagreements, but in fact just escalate spitballings to murders and gang wars. Not great, in my opinion.
What do you mean rust isn’t the best thing since sliced bread? <calls hitman>
It takes less than 5 minutes to get one.
> Your example happens to be "free domain, when you pay us money", which is stretching the definition of free.
That was just one example, which is what I wrote. There are many others that don't require website hosting. [1][2]
[1] https://www.getfreedomain.name/
[2] https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-get-a-free-domain-name-f...
However, here is a free subdomain I've done for you. I created http://hnretroid.mooo.com/, added an A record, and pointed it at 209.216.230.240, which is news.ycombinator.com.
There will be another free domain service. There always has and always will be, unfortunately. There always will be something to fill that void. In the same way that legitimate actors write legitimate apps, criminals have their own ecosystems on which they rely for their income.
[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/03/sued-by-meta-freenom-hal...
Domain registration happens through an established registrar who collects fees. There are no free-as-in-beer top level domains that I’m aware of.
I would love to be wrong, because I own more than a couple domains myself.
You need to be careful, because they are enticing with free and then trying to charge. Free subdomains are easier to obtain, but there are some domains in "off-TLDs" that can be obtained. The list of those changes over time.
Honestly, though, I wouldn't use those for an actual business. The conversation was about how to subvert using domains as identification.
> USD $10 per year might sound like a lot, but how about USD $1 per top-level domain for the first year?! If you manage to gain any sort of traffic in that year, the domain will practically pay for itself!
> Since mid-January 2023, all Freenom-based domains (.tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq) are down and not available
> .free launch dates will be forthcoming.
That’s one weird website with possibly some free subdomains.
Enjoy number domains on .xyz for dirt cheap
That article describes Facebook having brought suit against freenom for giving out free domains, because they were primarily used by criminals. There will be another free domain provider. There always is. But, this also makes the point that the number and impact of these free domains is huge. Spammers use them to spam, and this is one reason why domains should not be considered to have any gravitas as an auth mechanism for identity.
From that article:
Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for
five so-called “country code top level domains”
(ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African
Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea;
.ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau.
Freenom has always waived the registration fees for
domains in these country-code domains, presumably as a
way to encourage users to pay for related services, such
as registering a .com or .net domain, for which Freenom
does charge a fee.
On March 3, 2023, social media giant Meta sued Freenom
in a Northern California court, alleging cybersquatting
violations and trademark infringement. The lawsuit also
seeks information about the identities of 20 different
“John Does” — Freenom customers that Meta says have been
particularly active in phishing attacks against
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users.
“The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services
are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because
Freenom provides free domain name registration services
and shields its customers’ identity, even after being
presented with evidence that the domain names are being
used for illegal purposes,” the complaint charges. “Even
after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by
its customers, Freenom continues to license new
infringing domain names to those same customers.”
isn't that what it's about? What else do you think of?