Here is a screen shot from a bank’s website. Do you see anything wrong with it?
Of course, the answer is yes. This website is artificially constraining a wide variety of valid Internet users from entering their valid email address into the web form. Users of domains like .travel, .jobs, .tv or .ca would have a hard time entering their name into a form like this.
As a result of problems such as these, ICANN has been developing a toolkit for application developers so they can use more robust techniques for verifying the validity of domain names. The aim of the toolkit is for software developers to be able to accurately test for valid top-level domains and ensure that the situation above does not occur.
Whilst it is not clear to me why a credit card application needs to be so structured, if they choose to do so, it makes sense that they do so in a way that will not disadvantage users of specific top-level domains.
{ 9 comments }
George Kirikos 03.28.07 at 3:22 pm
The toolkit is very useful. That being said, though, It could be a conscious form of spam and identify-theft prevention by the bank in question (Chase), to restrict the TLDs that can sign-up. An American banking website would probably not want residents of Canada (.ca = Canada), and their form specifically mentions “You must be a US resident”. I know that I’ve had to filter out certain countries in Eastern Europe and Asia due to the incidence of forum-spamming coming from free email accounts in those regions region. It doesn’t eliminate all the spam, and does inconvenience a few legitimate users, but unfortunately not all TLDs are created equally. Filtering by TLD isn’t perfect, but it can be a first step until more sophisticated and costly methods (e.g. filtering by IP address) are employed.
Joe 03.28.07 at 5:06 pm
Canadians probably don’t bank with Chase. Most users of .ca live in Canada, and use a Canadian bank like CIBC or President’s Choice Financial.
I prefer the option to simply type out my entire e-mail address, including TLD.
Kim Davies 03.28.07 at 10:24 pm
I don’t disagree with the prerogative of organisations, particularly banks, to only deal with people locally. However, to use the ccTLD as a measure is extremely crude. One can not assume someone originating from a particular ccTLD resides in that particular country, especially given the increase in globalised business.
IP address geolocation is not really any better. When I lived in Brussels, the IP address I originated from was from ICANN’s block which has a registered address in the USA. International travellers will realise the perils on limiting access by this method too.
Now that I am based in Los Angeles, for private matters I still use my long-standing personal email address which sits under “.au”. Despite having a US social security number and all the other necessary proofs of local residence, I am blocked from various websites for reasons that make little sense.
Of course, its not only my personal problem. ICANN receives regular reports on these kind of problems, as do operators of newer gTLDs. Hence the reason for the universal acceptance programme.
Kim Davies 03.28.07 at 10:44 pm
Canadian residents probably don’t, but that doesn’t mean people with “.ca” domains don’t. Besides, what about examples closer to home like “.pr”? I’d think the US citizens of Puerto Rico are likely to want to use banks.
George Kirikos 03.29.07 at 11:09 am
I agree with you that it’s crude, but it does make economic sense, as more sophisticated methods can be more costly, and doing nothing is also costly. For example, on a forum I manage, 100% of the signups using email addresses ending in .ua (Ukraine), .ru (Russia), .su (Soviet Union), .fm (Micronesia), .by (Belarus), .uz (Uzbekistan), .ro (Romania) and .cz (Czeck Republic) were spammers. 100% (and that’s even after adding a CAPTCHA). I have nothing against citizens of those countries, but unfortunately their TLDs are being misused by criminals to access the forum I manage, so I’ve simply refused to allow any automated signups from those TLDs any longer, as it’s costly to remove all the spam (if someone wanted to be whitelisted, they can email me directly). The costs of having to remove the spam outweighed the benefits of adding any additional legitimate users from those TLDs, unfortunately. If one manages a banking website, I’m sure that similar cost-benefit analysis is performed, although the numbers are a million times greater in scale than most other websites.
Present 03.30.07 at 3:05 am
Awesome! Let’s start at home:
http://ccnso.icann.org/applications/application.html
linda 04.11.07 at 5:04 pm
I am not finding my topic here,so I will ask all these experst right here
HOW COME WHEN I MADE MY DAMAIN NAME I WAS NOT TOD I WAS NOT BUYING IT FOR GOOD?
NOW I MUST REGISTER,OR RENT IT FOR EVER AND EVER?
I AM SICK ABOUT IT?
IS THERE ANY WAY I CAN PURCHASE MY NAME FOR ME ONLY FOREVER PLEASE HELP ME.I AM A SIMPLE WOMAN WHO CREATES ART AND MADE MY NAME AND JUST STARTING.I WAS ESTATIC WHEN IT WASNT TAKEN! PLEASE
HELP ME..LINDA
THANKS YOU
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