You Don't Need Us To .tel You This Isn't A Good Idea

from the fun-with-TLDs dept

We'd previously discussed the .tel domain, at least in terms of its sheer ridiculousness. The premise of this latest TLD is that people and companies can use it to put their contact information online. Yes, you read that correctly -- they expect people to pay up for new domains to put their phone number and email address and other contact info online. The promised twist is that a .tel domain "encodes this information into the DNS system." Instead of getting a standard web site when people visit a .tel site, they'll get one that shows contact info. Really groundbreaking stuff, isn't it? The .tel folks also say that certain directory services will be able to access this info.

The mainstream press is doing its typical job of buying into the TLD registrar's claims, without stopping to ask a couple of questions. First, why is something like this at all necessary? Second, is it really a good thing to inject people's contact information into the DNS system? DNS records have long been a favorite haunt for spammers to hunt down email addresses. Now, encouraging people to put their email addresses, IM contacts, phone numbers and physical addresses online, where they can be easily harvested, really doesn't seem like a great idea. Telnic, the company behind .tel, says it's got ways for individuals to control who can see their information (they have a video about the controls), but the system is overly complex and convoluted. In a nutshell, if you want to protect your info, your friends and contacts have to send you "friend requests", which you then need to approve if you want them to see your information. Sound familiar? That's because it's the same thing you've done in all the free social-networking and contact-management sites you've already joined, and where your contact info already lives. Furthermore, if somebody is your friend, isn't it more than likely they already have your contact info? Keeping all the contact info .tel aggregates openly available really doesn't seem like a good idea for individuals; enacting the privacy controls reinforces the utter pointlessness of .tel over already available, free, services. But who cares when the registrar is collecting all those wonderful fees?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Get Ready To Pay Up Just To Let People Know How To Contact Your Company

from the a-total-waste dept

We've been plenty critical of plans to set up new top level domains for URLs. Each time there's an extension (such as adding .biz, .info, etc.), all it's really meant is that companies felt forced to cough up more money to secure domains they didn't need and wouldn't use. The whole thing is a scam. However, none is as ridiculous as the decision three years ago to add a ".tel" domain, where companies could put their contact info. Yes, apparently, some company convinced ICANN to extend the TLD space for .tel domains -- knowing that tons of companies would have to pay up, just to make sure there their contact info was at company.tel, rather than something like company.com/contact/.

While we hadn't heard much about .tel over the past few years, it looks like it's now set to get moving, as early registrations have opened up, and the one company (the registrar who is going to make all the cash for this) is encouraging companies to pay up. Companies will do so, of course, because they'll feel they need to protect their brand from others -- but they won't do so because it's useful. It's not as if anyone is having any trouble finding the "contact" forms on websites that have them. And, for companies that don't have easy to find contact forms, that's usually by choice -- so it's unlikely they'll suddenly rush to put up a .tel site. This whole process makes no sense, and ICANN, who orchestrated the whole thing, should be ashamed. Basically all it's done is create a totally unnecessary situation, where for no good reasons, a ton of companies have to hand over a bunch of money to Telnic.

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