Today while browsing through my feeds I ran across a post over at Yahoo about a report identifying the most dangerous web domains. 

Obviously it got my attention right away.    After reading it, it looks like McAfee has pegged the most dangerous TLD as the .info domain, with .hk (Hong Kong) and .cn (China) leading the way for the ccTLDs. 

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.

A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the “.com” domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.

More spammers, malicious code writers and other cybercriminals can establish an online presence when domain name registry businesses cut requirements for registering a site in order to boost their profit and profile. The report doesn’t identify domain name registration companies McAfee believes are responsible for those lapses.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are in the business of registering domain names; some are large and well known, while others are small and less reputable, offering their services on the cheap and with flimsy or no background checks to lure in more customers.

The fact that Internet scam artists gravitate to domain name services with lower fees and fewer requirements isn’t new.

I find this very interesting, but also very unsurprising.  My guess would be the low cost involved with registering an info domain is responsible for it being the most used domain for evil purposes.   A few weeks ago Google accidentally removed all info domains from their index for about half a day.  An accident or a test of some sort? 

So far it looks like very few details have been released, but it looks like before long it will be subscription based.   So, how will this affect their readers?

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a big fan of Domaining.com.   While they technically aren’t feed scrapers, they don’t do any work.   They don’t write content, they don’t do research, they don’t post any original thoughts.   They just publish an excerpt of what was already published elsewhere.

As a person that runs a domain blog, I don’t like that it takes away from the need to visit the actual blog.  Now they want you to pay them?   I think this is a bad move on there part.

Lately Rick Latona has been giving you some great things on his blog to think about before making a significant purchase on a domain name.   Today I wanted to add something to the list that I spend a lot of time considering before buying domain names. 

Have you ever seen a domain name for sale that is accompanied by an incredibly long description or explanation of why you should purchase it?   Things like what it means in another language, what it is a misspelling of, or a full paragraph about how incredibly valuable it will be someday.  If its going to be so valuable, why are you selling it?!?

Before buying a domain, I always take the possible requirement of a explanation into account.  Generally if it requires explanation, I don’t buy it.  The two exceptions to this rule are when people provide related domain sales values and when details are provided for geo domains.  If you’re try to sell me a geo domain, let me know the population, tourism information, and any other information that might be useful.   I will of course verify that information prior to purchasing, but it gives me a snapshot and grabs my attention.  

If a domain is going to be truly valuable (non-geo), it should really sell itself just by typing the domain name.  If an explanation is needed, it probably isn’t worth nearly what you think it is.