Monday, October 23, 2017

Advisors blocking emails from new gTLDs?

I read that some advisors block their clients from receiving emails using a specific new domain name extension.

Yes...I read that (...)

In more simple words, it means that a person in charge of offering the service to manage emails for you will decide that (for whatever reason) you won't receive emails from a complete domain name extension. For example, if the .TOP new gTLD is a concerned extension, it means that you won't receive any emails from any email ending in ".top".

TLDs with the worst reputations
There is a list of TLDs with the worst reputations for spam operations. It is maintained by Spamhaus and this is how it explains why a TLD can be bad: "A TLD may be "bad" in two ways. On one side, the ratio of bad to good domains may be higher than average, indicating that the registry could do a better job of enforcing policies and shunning abusers. However, some TLDs with a high fraction of bad domains may be quite small, and their total number of bad domains could be relatively limited with respect to other, bigger TLDs. Their total "badness" to the Internet is limited by their small total size".

OK, this is not a new story: some new domain name extension - because the domains they offer are cheap - are an open door to spammers and malware operators but unless I am wrong, this has always existed: don't you receive spam from emails ending in ".com" too?

Scarry
I understand that Spam is an annoyance but I would certainly not want a third party to take the decision to block me from receiving emails from an entire domain name extensions for the assumption that it is listed in the Spamhaus list or just because some people don't like new gTLDs "because .com is better":

  • What if you miss that email coming from your new accountant who's using a ".accountant" domain name in its emails?
  • What if you miss this email from that startup using a ".agency" because it wants to be identified as an agency online?
  • What if you miss ALL THESE EMAILS because your advisor doesn't like new domain name extensions?
1,227
One thousand two hundred and twenty seven new domain name extensions were introduced to the Internet. In many of these "new gTLDs", domain name registration volumes are increasing, which also means that more people are using these in their email. If you have a doubt, have a look at this report. So: do you seriously want to take that risk?

Corporate Registrars
There are external advisors who "deal with domain names" and Corporate Registrars who it is the job to provide serious recommendations on how to deal with domain names and emails. They are not so many to be serious and I count five that I would recommend. On that list, none of them would ever - never - suggest their client to block a complete Top-Level Domain from sending emails.

And by the way
I have a client who uses a ".top" domain name for his website and decision was taken to use a ".top" because it matches with the name of the company. My client is fully satisfied with this: he even shortened his domain name changing to a ".top" and now redirects the ".com to the ".top", as well as emails.

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !