V for Vendetta? Nope, V for Verisign.
If you have the patience to scroll through your spam mailbox these days, you will soon discover an obvious pattern.
The majority of the domains sending out the bulk of spam, are descriptive long tails with dashes in-between.
Spammers do this to achieve two things: first, supposed openness about their “warez” and second, to be able to pipe their content into search engines more accurately.
A new proposal by Verisign – the Registry for .com and .net domains – will most likely end this type of behavior.
“What we propose is to increase the cost of ownership for dashed domains by 6,000%”, said Vic Marrow, VP of regional markets for Verisign.
“By increasing the renewal fees for dashed domains to almost $500 we essentially eradicate the reason that many spammers register those useless domains”, he added with a smirk.
Verisign has made other interesting proposals in the past, such as increased fees for enabling “www” in domains or even to allow domains resolve altogether.
The dramatic increase in the dashed domain fees will probably disappoint many legitimate domainers, who rely on a dashed alternative of compound domains. Verisign says they will address the issue by offering free secure certificates (SSL) and waiving the fees for the first year.
“We are here to help promote Internet commerce and reduce spam”, said Vic Marrow. “We believe we can do it, but we need the assistance of all domainers in order to combat and eradicate spam.”
The new measures are scheduled for mid-July, when most domainers will be on vacation; this will help reduce the reaction of those that are normally vigilant about such hefty budgetary changes.
