.ng is the most dangerous cctld | Hacker News Reader

.ng is the most dangerous cctld

nairaland.com

76 pointsagbonghama58 comments

Wow, way to miss the point, people. It's not about the price, but the fact that people are being robbed of their domains.

You get robbed, and then you get robbed again.

Then again, is this any surprise in a country like Nigeria? That country has a long, long way to go to claw its way from the absolute worst in terms of corruption.

Sad story. I'd avoid a number of African TLDs, to be honest. Remember the .ly fiasco a couple years back[1]

[1] http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...

Using a domain from an oppressive nation always seemed weird to me. Both in terms of censorship/hijacking risk, but also simply funding them. .ly is one of the classics there, but not the only one.

Also, the NIC in Libya threatened several times claiming that .ly domains had to fall within Sharia. I can guarantee that most bit.ly URLs rarely fell under that requirement.

It's cool, so that means it's ethical! #hackerlogic

do you think .ly still suffers from the risk? do you think .it is safer?

Was that an ironic pointer to the Italian government, I’d laugh. Otherwise…

Embarrassing stuff.

It is sad that only negative/stereotypical stories from Nigeria seem to make it to the front page of HN.

As you see on the comment in the thread, Nigerians are against this behavior. I had 2 domains taken from me too ironically one was takeaway.com.ng.

I believe that there a procedures for this to be sorted out ICANN I believe is the arbiter of these types of issues. I would encourage the victim to follow such process. Perhaps someone here can suggest how such cases can/have been dealt with.

I'd like to stress again that this is a rogue incident and not normal like a few of the stereotypical comments below will want to make you believe.

I think ICANN generally washes their hands of national TLDs - the whole point of national TLDs is to let countries manage them on their own. Presumably that means the Nigerian government is free to run .ng however they see fit, even if it means letting this extortionist agency milk their users.

It's happened to you too... Not really a rogue incident if it's common.

Yes. In 2009. I have bought a large number since then without any issues.

I believe there is a rogue employee there. Did not have the energy to pursue it.

What I'm saying is that it is not an official policy. Lack of governance and follow up like the guy who is the subject of this thread.

Haha "takeaway.com.ng"... it seems like you were tempting fate :)

I guess this proves that there's a cosmic sense of humor? The ISO codes when parceled out pre-Internet ended up giving the most valuable (in English) Internet domain suffixes to some of the least stable countries (ly for Libya, sy for Syria, and so forth).

I am not a native English speaker. Could you elaborate a bit, why those domain suffixes are so valuable in English?

Because they allow a domain holder to be creative.

.ly matches the ly suffix in English for example. So, thus you have adf.ly ... adfly.

Your example doesn't demonstrate the ly suffix in English, incidental.ly.

> although .ng is the most expensive cctld of all cctlds($100 usd per year),but it is the most dangerous cctld of all cctlds.

.nr is $500 USD a year.

http://www.cenpac.net.nr/dns/index.html

I've dealt with them before. You really, really don't want to.

But do they take your domain back after a few months so they can resell it to someone else? Because that's what really makes .ng expensive.

The European obscure domains can be pretty expensive too, but far more stable.

.sm for San Marino is GBP 225 per year with Gandi

(San Marino - Merino is a kind of wool - fascinating place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino )

Cycling on my brain today, was just thinking of Vulpine.cc products before posting that comment.

.cc domains are cheap though, so had to think of our own domain for a good example of a stable nice domain.

(Merino is a very highly regarded breed of sheep specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merino )

Also a common phrase in Spanish... confusing churras with merinas is alike to mix apples and oranges. Or confusing a sheep with a country :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churra_%28sheep%29

How are the sheep/wool relevant to the country?

Diet, climate, veterinary differences.

Going back to bicycles, Brooks of England only use leather from Italy as they discovered that modern veterinary practices were focusing so heavily on meat production for the animals that the animals were producing a thinner and more brittle leather that didn't age well and had more imperfections.

Brooks saddles require a thick leather, single piece with virtually no defects. So they had to find a source of leather where the primary use of the animal was the hide and food and other products were secondary.

Fascinating stuff. Beyond particular breeds of livestock, it's about their environment, the country laws relating to veterinary practises and handling, etc.

.pr (Puerto Rico) is $1000.

Sketchy Internet behavior from Nigeria? Astonishing.

That...was painful to read.

Can we get a TLDR?

It's not that it was too long - it's more that it was just illegible.

Nira, the registrar for .ng, apparently retracts valuable domains and sells them. The author claims that happened to gaming.ng, which was taken from him and sold for $10 000 usd/y.

.ng's registrar (NIRA) will pull your domain without asking or recourse if somebody proposes enough money for it.

ICANN is acting as a TLDR, if you're interested.

Have they proposed .tldr yet?

.ng is not the most expensive cctld

Off the top of my head I can think of .rw, which costs €220/yr (~$300) to foreign purchasers from one of the few registrars that provide it.

my guess is that it's the "most expensive" because you register, you pay, and then it gets seized and resold without your knowledge and without a way to appeal it. The author said games.ng got sold for 10,000USD/year (which WOULD make it the most expensive).

I think the seizure adds to the price. Imagine ycombinator.com or even reddit.com sold to the highest bidder? Millions in damages.

How stupid would you have to be, to pay $10,000 for a domain stolen from the rightful owner, when they could just turn around and steal it back from you?

*Assuming you knew it was stolen.

.na Costs even more @ $ 5000.00+ per year (ref : http://www.101domain.com/na.htm)

Why would anyone pay that much for a domain? Are there any notable sites using it?

Kind of relevant: the new TLD '.rich' is more expensive- $1,769.61 on Gandi. This is not a CCTLD, though.

Related: Counterexamples of good ccTLDs: https://gun.io/blog/secure-your-domain-where-is-safe-to-regi...

Two years later, they might want to reconsider the .is TLD. It's about $50/year and open to international folks, however they do have some unique NS requirements[1].

[1] http://www.isnic.is/en/domain/req

As others pointed out, .ng is not the most expensive but I believe the most expensive is not .rw, or .nr but .ki at $1500/yr.

Actually .ki is the most (made stupidly) expensive tld: $1,000 - $1,400/yr

Guys, it's Nigeria, what did you expect from a country that punishes being gay with imprisonment?

Off-topic much?

Kiribati is about $1500 year (though fluctuates on exchange rate and registrar)

Well Nigeria is a pretty dangerous country, I guess it's "normal" that it is in cyberspace too.

That's a wrong and bogus thing to say.

The murder rate is triple the US's, which is in itself quite high. How's that?

Why?

I am against what NIRA did. It is indeed really outrageous. But you don't because of that say "a country is dangerous". The statement is way "bigger" than the context in discussion.

You do not make blatant negative statements about a country without backing it up. That's why.

You need a source that Nigeria is a dangerous country? I didn't think this was a contentious claim, but for an easy go-to lets use the US State Department's travel warnings.

http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/ni...

http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarn...

NIRA is an org in a developing nation full of violence. The idea of conducting a business transaction with them over the internet from another country and expecting everything to be on the up and up is such privileged nonsense I've broken my personal embargo on using that word.

If you read further, you would see that it is the North Eastern part of Nigeria that has a violence issue. http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarn...

Chicago has a lot of violence. I would not go a day say America is a dangerous nation.

It fits the stereotype you crave for. Congratulations.

An embargo on the word "privileged"... I thought I was the only one.

It's established fact that Nigeria is a hot-spot for a lot of trouble. Just look at any of the metrics the UN publishes on corruption and murder rates.

Of course, this is just an average. There are parts that are fairly civilized, no worse than any asian country, but there are also parts that are out of control.

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