About .ws and .info domain names

[Steve MacLellan]

I don't know about you but I find a majority of the spam I get is from yahoo email addresses. Naturally I can't filter all yahoo email addresses, but I find the majority of URLs to click on in these emails are pointing to websites that use a .ws or .info instead of .com, .net, and .org domain name.

I am tempted to setup a filter to block all emails that contain domain names with .ws and .info sites.

Anyone else feel this way?

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[Jim Guinn]

I definitely concur with your findings...yahoo emails addys and .ws or .info domains.

Jim

[Karen]

rut oh ... I just registered an .info domain.

If you find that you link .info with spam, does that also mean you don't take an .info domain seriously?

For example: if I owned horsetraining.info would it not be as believable as horsetraining.com?


I personally think that a domain like horsetraining.info imply exactly what the domain is about ... because of the .info extension.

Karen

[MommyEnterprises]

[Jim Guinn]

Hi Karen and Sefani,

I don't know about others, but I do take .ws and .info sites seriously. It's just that I get a lot of spam from sites with these extensions. Getting spam and visiting a site with a .ws or .info that is legit are two different things.

I don't know why I get so much spam from sites with these extensions, unless a lot of spammers buy these newer extensions because they can "copycat" a well-know URL so readers might think it's the "real" URL.

Ex:
Real - www.ligitimatecompany.com
Faker- www.legitimatecompany.ws or .info

Jim

[Steve MacLellan]

I'd have to agree with Jim. If some one has a credible site using these domain names, I wouldn't have a problem visiting or buying from the site.

It could be spammers are using these domain names because they can get a name resembling a credible company, and it could be these domain names come cheaper. I haven't looked into the cost of them, so I wouldn't know.

As I said, I am tempted to filter all of the email I'm getting, that includes these URLs in the body of the message. I've pretty well got my inbox cleaned up after 3,000+ filters. The spam messages that are getting through are typically yahoo, msn, and netscape, and most of these contain an URL to one of these .info or .ws websites.

3,000 filters doesn't sound like a lot, but it includes many services that offer free email accounts on the web such as hotpop.com. This means by blocking any email with a hotpop.com email address, I've saved myself from sorting through a few hundred spam messages per week.

As far as yahoo and msn, I'd rather not block all email from these two, but if I block any that contain these two domain names, it will have a considerable affect on what spam is getting through.

Just a thought...

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[ChristyK]

[Steve MacLellan]