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Comment by lgvld | Hacker News Reader

Freenom sucks; sad they're gone, so many domains lost.

But just to be exhaustive, Freenom was not the only place one were able to register a .ga domain: I still use a .ga domain registered a few years ago at France-DNS -- which merged with / was acquired by NETIM recently.

Registering the domain through a "real registar" allowed me to get something more reliable (than a free domain on Freenom) as well as whois privacy.

The official Gabonese whois/registar website [1] seems to be down at the moment but never seemed very legit/pro to me... [2] & [3]

[1] http://www.my.ga/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220623223503/http://www.my.ga/... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230423231601/http://www.my.ga/...

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Why go through all this trouble vs just using a normal domain name on a gTLD? (Or your own country's ccTLD if widely used?) I've owned domains on .com, .net, and .org starting over two decades ago, and then more recently on new gTLDs like .dev, and never had a single problem. I don't see the appeal of hijacking poorly run ccTLDs for other purposes.

One appeal I've seen is if a ccTLD matches the last 2 letters of your last name. You can then set up a mail adres first@lastna.me. Or a personal website at http://first.lastna.me/

Not for everyone probably, but if it'd be easy for me, I'd go for it.

My last name is Daga and I hated that 2 letter .ga weren’t allowed. Would’ve snapped up da.ga

Actually 2/3 letters domains were accepted -- maybe not on Freenom though; you had to register on the official registry -- but were also prohibitively expensive.

I can see the appeal of that, as my last name ends in *in, but .in is a registry notoriously unfriendly to foreigners (as are many ccTLDs), and it just doesn't make sense to build any kind of online presence around a domain name that could be taken away from me at any time for any reason, simply because I don't actually live in India.

just anecdotal, but I've had a .in domain (as a foreigner) for years, and I've never had any problems—how do they normally arise?

and it's at namecheap, too, with whom I haven't historically had the greatest experiences

The two-letter TLDs are basically property of that country.

India makes the rules for .in, for example, and noone else gets much of a say. There's a registry, NIXI, and there are contracts between the registrars and NIXI, and between the registrars and registrants. I would expect the contracts involving NIXI to be under Indian law, and most registrars choose their home country for their customer contracts.

So if you use Gandi to register a .in domain, you have a French contract with Gandi and Gandi an Indian contract with NIXI. Gandi also has a contract with ICANN (all ICANN-accredited registrars do) but that may or may not matter for India; the Indians decide that.

The same applies for other countries. Gandi offers .ga domains, for example.

Your domain is as safe as the contract law of the two countries involved.

Some countries allow almost anyone to register domains, others make different rules. Some/many allow people in the country to register domains, but disallow foreigners in order to simplify name choice for their own residents, for example.

I know someone who registered a .no domain by lying about something, and lost the domain unceremoniously when the registry found out. And of course a few hundred thousand brits lost their .eu domains when they left the EU.

I'd like an .er address. That's Eritrean. Last time I looked it up, that country was a mess. No telling who'd profit from domain registration, and not worth figuring that out for what amounts to vanity plates. Not gonna risk sponsoring bad guys for a funny domain name.

What's the value in having a .ga domain? To me, a .ga domain indicates a scam website or a really short lived one at best.

Vanity domain (first two letters of my family name).

> Freenom sucks; sad they're gone, so many domains lost.

They do suck but are they gone? I have a paid .tk domain and am able to login and manage it. I thought they just halted registration of new domains?

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