Dot TK The most Spammed out TLD According to McAfee

[Brett_Tabke]

[forbes.com...]

which released a survey Monday ranking the world's most dangerous Web addresses. McAfee says more than 10% of all Web sites registered out of Tokelau, identifiable by the ".tk" at the end of their Web address, will expose users to spam, viruses and spyware.

McAfee's survey was based on data from SiteAdvisor, a Boston-based company that the security company bought last April. SiteAdvisor's free online tool assigns Web sites a safety score based on whether they send spam, infect surfers with malicious programs or deliver excessive pop-up ads.

The new survey distinguishes sites based on their domain registration, which shows up as the last two or three letters in a Web address: Brazilian sites, for instances, end in ".br", while sites registered by academic groups tend to end in ".edu". McAfee says it looked at 8.1 million heavily trafficked Web sites registered at 265 different domains.

[encyclo]

Full report is available here:

[siteadvisor.com...]

An interesting snippet:

E-Mail: A stunning 73.2% of the more than 6,000 .info sites that we have tested for e-mail practices are rated risky, meaning that SiteAdvisor registrations at these sites resulted in the receipt of high volume e-mail, spammy e-mail or both.

So more than just the .tk domain (which has a high percentage but low volume in absolute terms), it is interesting to see that .info suffers badly (in second place). ccTLDs which have residence requirements are generally seen as safer, for example .au (which has some very strict requirements) being one of ccTLDs with the least number of incidents.

[SEOPTI]

What I know is that McAfee spammed me until I cancelled their service.

[vincevincevince]

It's all about pricing, in my opinion. .tk starts at $0.00 for a forwarded domain. Fully controlled domains are frequently less than a .com and availability is still good.

I'm disappointed that they have not included the .ac domains.

[bill]

I picked up a few .tk domains when I learned on WebmasterWorld that they were going for free.

Free .TK Domain Names [webmasterworld.com]

However, after about a year or so I let all of my names lapse. They weren't much help on the SEO end of things (I guess my company didn't appeal to the Polynesian community), and the spammy doorway page sites started up quite early. This report does not surprise me.

[Matt Probert]

I wouldn't trust a word McAfee says. They publicly accussed me of distributing Adware through my web site and advised people against visiting. All untrue of course, but how can a UK sole trader sue an American corporation for libel?

Throughout history McAfee have a history of hyping and spreading fear in order to promote their own dodgy business practices. Any one else remember "scan"?

Matt

[Amos_Tebear]

The reason why some of the countries that are pretty much 'risk free' are also due to the restriction that are in place, or were in place up until recently. Requiring a local company and only being able to register your company name certainly wouldn't breed a hotbed of activity for those doing evil, unlike domains such as .tk and .ru which are free/low cost and unrestricted.

Amos

[jonathanellis]

It shows a bit of a shift - only a few years ago my school was encouraging students to learn web design and put a page up on a .tk domain. It shows that you can't really give something away for free without any moderation and expect everyone to behave.