Google adds censorship workaround to Android devices

Google is using experimental DNS to help people in censorious regimes access blocked web sites.
Alphabet sister company Jigsaw this week released an Android app called Intra, which enables users to tunnel their DNS queries over HTTPS to compatible servers, avoiding common types of on-the-wire manipulation.
The company reportedly says it has been testing the app with Venezuelan dissidents recently.
The feature will also be built in to the next version of Android — known as Android 9 or Android Pie — where it will be called Private DNS.
The app is designed for people who for one reason or another are unable to update their device’s OS.
Intra and Private DNS use “DNS over HTTPS”, an emerging protocol Google and others have been working on for a while.
As it’s non-standard, end users will have to configure their devices or Intra apps to use a DoH-compatible DNS server. The public DNS services operated by Google (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) are both currently compatible.
The release comes even as Google faces controversy for allegedly kowtowing to the Chinese government’s demands for censored search and news results.
You may notice that the new app is being marketed via a .org web site, rather than Google’s own .app gTLD, but intra.app takes visitors directly to the Intra page on the Google Play store.

Emoji domains now easier to use

Emoji domains have become marginally easier to navigate to in the last month, following an update to Google’s Chrome browser.
Google has added “Emoji” to the context menu that appears when users right-click in any editable text field — including the address/search bar.
Clicking the option brings up a searchable list of common emojis that can be inserted into the address bar for either search or, with the addition of a typed-in TLD, navigation.
TLDs currently supporting emojis include .ws, .fm and .to. ICANN has ruled out support for emojis in the gTLDs for security reasons.
When the domain is resolved, the emojis render in the address bar as Punycode-converted Latin characters beginning with the usual “xn--” prefix, at least under my default configuration.
The whole process is still a bit fiddly, so I wouldn’t all rush out to build your businesses on emoji domains just yet.
The context menu feature appears to have been on the experimental track in Chrome for at least a month, but was more recently turned on by default, at least on all the Chrome 69 installs I’ve tested.
If you don’t get the emoji option in your context menu, you should be able to turn it on by navigating to chrome://flags/#enable-emoji-context-menu and selecting the Enabled option.

Chutzpah alert! DotKids wants ICANN handout to fight gTLD auction

New gTLD applicant DotKids Foundation has asked ICANN for money to help it fight for .kids in an auction against Amazon and Google.
The not-for-profit was the only new gTLD applicant back in 2012 to meet the criteria for ICANN’s Applicant Support Program, meaning its application fee was reduced by $138,000 to just $47,000.
Now, DotKids reckons ICANN has a duty to carry on financially supporting it through the “later stages of the process” — namely, an auction with two of the world’s top three most-valuable companies.
The organization even suggests that ICANN dip into its original $2 million allocation to support the program to help fund its bids.
Because .kids is slated for a “last resort” auction, an ICANN-funded winning bid would be immediately returned to ICANN, minus auction provider fees.
It’s a ludicrously, hilariously ballsy move by the applicant, which is headed by DotAsia CEO Edmon Chung.
It’s difficult to see it as anything other than a delaying tactic.
DotKids is currently scheduled to go to auction against Google’s .kid and Amazon’s .kids application on October 10.
But after ICANN denied its request for funding last month, DotKids last week filed a Request for Reconsideration (pdf), which may wind up delaying the auction yet again.
According to DotKids, the original intent of the Applicant Support Program was to provide support for worthy applicants not just in terms of application fees, but throughout the application process.
It points to the recommendations of the Joint Applicant Support working group of the GNSO, which came up with the rules for the support program, as evidence of this intent.
It says ICANN needs to address the JAS recommendations it ignored in 2012 — something that could time quite some time — and put the .kids auction on hold until then.

Empty Whois a threat to the US elections?

Could a lack of Whois records thwart the fight against attempts to interfere in this year’s US elections?
That’s the threat raised by DomainTools CEO Tim Chen in a blog post, and others, this week.
Chen points to recent research by Facebook, based on an investigation by security company FireEye, that linked a large network of bogus news sites and social media accounts to the Iranian state media.
FireEye’s investigation used “historical Whois records”, presumably provided by DomainTools, to connect the dots between various domains and registrants associated with “Liberty Front Press”, a purportedly independent media organization and prolific social media user.
Facebook subsequently found that 652 accounts, pages and groups associated with the network, and removed them from its platform.
The accounts and sites in question were several years old but had been focusing primarily on politics in the UK and US since last year, Facebook said.
Based on screenshots shared by Facebook, the accounts had been used to spread political messages bashing US president Donald Trump and supporting the UK’s staunchly pro-Palestinian opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Google’s research, also inspired by FireEye’s findings and Whois data, linked the network to the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
The actions by Google and Facebook come as part of their crackdown on fake news ahead of the US mid-term Congressional elections, this November, which are are largely being seen as a referendum on the Trump presidency.
Because the domains in question predate the General Data Protection Regulation and ICANN’s response to it, DomainTools was able to capture Whois records before they went dark in May.
While the records often use bogus data, registrant email addresses common to multiple domains could be used to establish common ownership.
Historical Whois data for domains registered after May 2018 is not available, which will likely degrade the utility of DomainTools’ service over time.
Chen concluded his blog post, which appeared to be written partly in response to data suggesting that GDPR has not led to a growth in spam, with this:

Domain name Whois data isn’t going to solve the world’s cyberattack problems all on its own, but these investigations, centering on an issue of global importance that threatens our very democracy, likely get severely impaired without it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, a few uniquely important investigations among the hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks going on all day every day all over the globe by people and organizations that can now hide behind the anonymity inherent in today’s internet. It’s reasonable that domain names used for certain commercial or functional purposes should require transparent registration information. Whois is not a crime.

DomainTools is one of the founders of the new Coalition for a Secure and Transparent Internet, a lobby group devoted to encouraging legislatures to keep Whois open.
Representatives of Facebook and Iran’s government are among the members of the Expedited Policy Development Process on Whois, an emergency ICANN working group that is currently trying to write a permanent GDPR-compliant Whois policy for ICANN.

Swiss registry gets more traffic than Google, kinda

Switch, the Swiss ccTLD registry, has started publishing a monthly list of the .ch domains with the most DNS traffic, a list that Switch itself currently tops.
The list ranks the top 1,000 .ch domains by the number of DNS resolvers that have queried them over the course of a calendar month.
By that measure, switch.ch is the runaway number one, with 792,958 resolvers. That’s a long way ahead of Google’s google.ch, which comes in at #4 with 529,846 resolvers.
It seems pretty clear that it’s traffic to Switch’s name servers that is likely responsible for its comprehensive lead.
That’s underlined by the composition of the rest of the top end of the list, which is dominated by registrars and hosting companies.
At #2 is the brand-protection registrar Com Laude, a rank seemingly earned due to the fact that the registrar hosts many of its clients’ high-traffic domains (most of which are .com names) on, among others, a comlaude.ch name server.
Switch said its data is collected from its two primary nic.ch name servers and covers all types of traffic. Other such rankings, such as Alexa, measure only web traffic.
By counting the number of unique IP addresses doing DNS queries over the course of a month, Switch said it avoids pitfalls associated with low time-to-live (TTL) settings that could occur if it was counting the number of queries.
More details on its methodology can be found here. The data itself, which goes back 12 months, can be freely downloaded as CSV files here.

.kids gTLD auction probably back on

Amazon, Google and a small non-profit appear to be headed to auction to fight for ownership of child-friendly new gTLDs.
ICANN last week defrosted the contention set for .kids/.kid; DotKids Foundation’s bid for .kids is no longer classified as “On-Hold”.
This means an ICANN-managed “last resort” auction is probably back on, having been cancelled last December in response to a DotKids request for reconsideration.
The RfR was thrown out by the ICANN board of directors, on the recommendation of its Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, in May.
.kids and .kid are in the same contention set because DotKids fought and won a String Confusion Objection against Google’s .kid application.
It’s also directly competing with Amazon for .kids.
A last-resort auction would mean that proceeds would be deposited in a special ICANN bank account currently swollen with something like a quarter-billion dollars.

Failure to launch: 10 years-old gTLDs that are still dormant

Over six years after the last new gTLD application window closed, more than one in 10 new gTLDs have yet to launch, even though some have been delegated for over four years.
Once you filter out duplicates, withdrawals and terminations from the original 1,930 applications, there were a maximum of roughly 1,300 potential new gTLDs from the 2012 round.
But, by my calculations, 144 of those have yet to even get around to their sunrise period. Most of those haven’t even filed their launch plans with ICANN yet.
Here’s 10 from that list I’ve picked based on how interesting they appear to me, in no particular order.
Yes, DI is doing listicles now. Hate-mail to the usual address.
.forum
This one’s owned by Jay Westerdal’s Top Level Spectrum, the same company behind .feedback, .realty and others. I quite like the potential of this string — the internet is chock-full of forums due to the easy availability of open-source forum software — but so far nobody’s gotten to register one. It was delegated back in June 2015 and doesn’t have a published launch plan as yet. An FAQ reading just saying “Jay was here !!!!! Test deploy..delete me later…” has been up on its site since at least last September. TLS is also sitting on .contact and .pid (for “personal ID”) with no launch dates in sight.
.scholarships
Owned by Scholarships.com, there’s a whiff of the defensive about this one. It’s been in the root since March 2015 but its site states the registry “is still finishing launch plans and will provide updates as they become available”. Scholarships.com is a site that connects would-be higher education students to potential sources of funding. It’s difficult to imagine many ways the matching gTLD could possibly help in that mission.
.giving
JustGiving, the UK-based charity campaign aggregator, won this gTLD and had it delegated in August 2015, but seemingly still hasn’t figured out what it wants to do with it. It’s not a dot-brand, so it’s presumably mulling over ways to give .giving domains to fundraisers in a way that does not compromise credibility. Whatever its plans, it’s taking its sweet time over them.
.cancerresearch
This is a weird one. Delegated four years ago, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation rather quickly went live with a bunch of interlinked .cancerresearch web sites, using its contractually permitted allotment of promotional domains. Contractually, it’s not a dot-brand, but it’s basically acting like one, having never actually given ICANN any info about sunrise, eligibility, trademark claims, general availability, etc. Technically, it’s still pre-launch, and I can’t see any reason why it would want to budge from that status. Huge loophole in the ICANN rules?
.beauty
Another whiff of gaming here. International woman-shaming powerhouse L’Oreal still has no announced plans to launch .beauty, .skin or .hair, which it had originally wanted to run as so-called “closed generics” (presumably to keep the keywords out of the hands of competitors). Of its small portfolio of generic gTLDs, delegated in 2016, it has actually launched .makeup already, with a $6,000 retail price and a strategy seemingly based on registry-owned domains matching the names of makeup-focused social media influencers. At least it’s actually selling names, even if nobody’s bought one yet.
.budapest
One of three city TLDs that were delegated back in 2014 but have yet to start selling domains. MMX is to run it in partnership with the local government of the Hungarian city, if it ever gets off the ground. Madrid (.madrid) and Zurich (.zuerich) have both also yet to roll out, although Zurich has settled on early 2019 for its launch.
.fan
Regular DI readers won’t be surprised to see this one on the list. In what may turn out to be a shocking waste of money, .fans registry Asiamix Digital acquired the singular .fan from Donuts back in 2015 and promptly let it sit idle for the next three years. Currently, with .fans turning out to be a flop, Asiamix has money troubles and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it under new ownership before too long. It’s not a terrible string, so there’s some potential there.
.ком, etc
.ком is one of 11 internationalized domain name transliterations of .com — .कॉम, .ком, .点看, .คอม, .नेट, .닷컴, .大拿, .닷넷, .コム, .كوم and .קוֹם — that Verisign had delegated back in 2015. To date, only the Japanese .コム has launched, and the registry reportedly arsed it up quite badly. Records show .コム peaked at over 28,000 names and sits at fewer than 7,000 today. None of the remaining IDNs have launch dates attached.
Anything owned by Google or Amazon
When it comes to sitting on dormant gTLDs, you can’t top Google and Amazon for sheer numbers. Google has 19 strings in pre-launch states right now, while Amazon has a whopping 34. Amazon is letting the likes of .free, .wow, .now, .deal, .save and .secure sit idle, while Google is still stroking its chin on the likes of .eat, .meme, .fly and .channel. At the snail’s pace these companies roll out gTLDs, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these strings never hit the market.
.bom
Portuguese for “.good”, .bom was delegated to local ccTLD registry Nic.br in 2015 but has no published launch dates and no content on its nic.bom registry web site. I’d say more, but I expect a certain prolific DI commenter could do a better job of it, so I’ll turn it over to him…

Google’s .app gTLD beats .porn to biggest sunrise yet

The sunrise period for Google Registry’s .app gTLD closed today and it looks like it might be the biggest sunrise of the 2012 round to date.
.app had 3,068 domains in its zone file this morning.
While not all will be sunrise registrations, it seems very likely that the new domain has comfortably beaten the previous sunrise record, which according to ICANN records was 2,091, set by ICM Registry’s .porn back in 2015.
One might imagine that the proportion of purely defensive registrations in .app is smaller than .porn; there are already a couple dozen live .app sites indexed by Google.
The median number of sunrise registrations for a new gTLD launch is 77, according to ICANN records.
The .app zone file today is a mash of big app brands such as Uber and Instagram, among a strong showing from software vendors and other industries such as banking and retail.
There are also plenty of entries that can only be defensive, the names of celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, and a bunch of dictionary-word domains that look like clear cases of Trademark Clearinghouse gaming.
Now that sunrise is done, .app has entered an Early Access Period modeled on the original Donuts EAP. It lasts seven days and sees the price of retail registration fall from well over $10,000 today to a couple hundred bucks a week from now.
After the EAP is over, retail prices will settle around the $20 mark on May 8.
Google paid $25 million for .app at an ICANN auction, a record at the time since beaten by still-contested .web.

Google’s $25 million .app domain finally has a launch date

One of the questions I get asked fairly regularly is “When is .app coming out?”, but until today I haven’t had a good answer.
Now I do. Google has finally released its launch timeline for the could-be-popular new gTLD.
.app will go to sunrise March 29, the company said last week.
Trademark holder exclusivity will end May 1, at which point a week-long Early Access Period will kick in.
There will be an extra fee, so far undisclosed, for EAP buyers.
Finally, on May 8, everyone will get access to the domain as it goes into general availability.
Registry pricing has not been disclosed.
Unusually for a new gTLD, Google plans to keep its Trademark Claims service — which notifies registrants and trademark owners when there’s a potential trademark infringement — open indefinitely, as opposed to the minimum 90-day period.
.app was delegated in early July 2015, so it’s been a loooong wait for people interested in the space.
Google paid $25 million for .app at an ICANN public auction in February 2015. At the time, that was a record-breaking price for a gTLD, but it’s since between dwarfed by the $135 million Verisign is paying for .web.
Google also said that it’s currently working on a launch plan for .dev, another gTLD that folk have been asking about, but that for now it’s focused on .app alone.

.kids auction is off

ICANN has postponed the planned auction of the .kid(s) gTLDs after an appeal from one of the applicants.
The last-resort auction had been penciled in for January 25, and there was a December 8 deadline for the three participants to submit their info to the auctioneer.
But DotKids Foundation, the shallowest-pocketed of the three, filed a Request for Reconsideration last Wednesday, asking ICANN to put the contention set back on hold.
The cancellation of the January auction appears to be to give ICANN’s board of directors time to consider the RfR under its usual process — it has not yet ruled on it.
DotKids and Amazon have applied for .kids and Google has applied for .kid. A String Confusion Objection won by Google put the two strings in the same contention set, meaning only one will eventually go live.
DotKids comprehensively lost a Community Priority Evaluation, which would negate an auction altogether, but it thinks the CPE got it wrong and wants to be treated the same way as other gTLD applicants whose CPE results are currently under review.
Reconsideration requests take between 30 and 90 days to process, and they rarely go the way of the requester, so the delay to the auction will likely not be too long.