While freenom did genuinely have issues with spam and the like.
I must say it played a pivotal role in my life, it allowed me to do my passion and have a domain name in my early teens when I couldn't pay for anything. Being able to toy with a domain name led me down many rabbit holes and led to me trying out self-hosting and system administration.
I have mixed feelings as well, for the same reason, but I find it absolutely terrible that the citizens of Mali, RCA, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea have basically been robbed of their TLD by their (mostly failed) governments.
> the free domain name provider has a long history of ignoring abuse complaints about phishing websites while monetizing traffic to those abusive domains
If the way to have there things is defrauding others, then they are not as free as they seem.
I'd say that a third-level domain is fine for teenage projects; was fine for me even past teens.
yep, being a kid iterested in tech and having parents, that are not, is probably a huge pain... internet at home and a computer.. sure... giving your credit card info to your kid for some name on the internet? No way s/he's getting that.
Having a free option (and dynamic dns, and possibly even a free virtual machine somewhere) makes a lot of learning and experimenting possible for kids.
They are knowingly allowing card fraud and other cybercrime groups to operate openly on there. We’re not talking about criminals that use the platform while trying to appear sneaky and flying under the radar - we’re talking about groups outright advertising their wares in the group name: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/04/deleted-facebook-cybercr...
> Some had existed on Facebook for up to nine years; approximately ten percent of them had plied their trade on the social network for more than four years.
> KrebsOnSecurity’s research was far from exhaustive: For the most part, I only looked at groups that promoted fraudulent activities in the English language. Also, I ignored groups that had fewer than 25 members. As such, there may well be hundreds or thousands of other groups who openly promote fraud as their purpose of membership but which achieve greater stealth by masking their intent with variations on or mispellings of different cyber fraud slang terms.
I have my own personal experience with this. I came across a page promoting Snapchat (and maybe other services) hacking services that in exchange for a fee claimed it would email you the credentials of the target account, with plenty of obviously compromised accounts posting comments claiming it works. Obviously very illegal in the vast majority of jurisdictions, but the double whammy there is that the service was itself a scam.
Reporting the aforementioned group and a few of the fake comments yielded that none of this activity goes against their community standards.
i love reading the comment in HN, not the articles. but this is a strange one.
> They are knowingly allowing card fraud and other cybercrime groups to operate openly on there.
i wonder if you believe yourself when you write stuff like that?
as if that company has a policy to allow fraud and cybercrime and they really believe its good for their business.
if you do... well... watch out from those black helicopters
Note: they "stopped phishing" by basically forbidding almost anyone from registering a domain, I've been trying to get a new domain there for months without success
This is the real answer, I have a paid domain and am still unable to get contact or transfer off (I have attempted this with all known registrars that support .tk, Freenom simply fails to respond to the transfer request)
I mean that's basically the point. The barrier to entry of $10/yr and breaking anonymity is enough to price out bad actors.
If anyone at all has a way to combat this stuff that doesn't rely on "bad actors need disposable identities to get around blocks and don't usually have money" will basically win the internet.
The title is a little deceptive. From near the end:
> Unfortunately, the lawsuits have had little effect on the overall number of phishing attacks and phishing-related domains, which have steadily increased in volume over the years.
> Piscitello said despite the steep drop in phishing domains coming out of Freenom, the alternatives available to phishers are many.
What alternative options exist for low budget passion projects, toy projects, and the like? It's such a tough space to exist, trying to offer a free service while also combating spam.
I was about to order something from a website[1] that showed as first page result on Google Search.
Spending couple of minutes on the site, it became obvious that it is a scam website. Confirmed further by another search on domain[2]. I wanted to report it but there is no easy way to report this. So I gave up and hope no one falls for it.
I've had people open up Facebook and Instagram accounts using my email address. They don't bother with requiring verification to use their services. Before I took over the accounts I'd get periodic notices about "friend" activity but never a nag to verify the e-mail.
[+] [-] talhah|2 years ago|reply
I must say it played a pivotal role in my life, it allowed me to do my passion and have a domain name in my early teens when I couldn't pay for anything. Being able to toy with a domain name led me down many rabbit holes and led to me trying out self-hosting and system administration.
Sad we can't have free things.
[+] [-] seszett|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheFreim|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_k|2 years ago|reply
If the way to have there things is defrauding others, then they are not as free as they seem.
I'd say that a third-level domain is fine for teenage projects; was fine for me even past teens.
[+] [-] 5e92cb50239222b|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|2 years ago|reply
yep, being a kid iterested in tech and having parents, that are not, is probably a huge pain... internet at home and a computer.. sure... giving your credit card info to your kid for some name on the internet? No way s/he's getting that.
Having a free option (and dynamic dns, and possibly even a free virtual machine somewhere) makes a lot of learning and experimenting possible for kids.
[+] [-] Nextgrid|2 years ago|reply
They are knowingly allowing card fraud and other cybercrime groups to operate openly on there. We’re not talking about criminals that use the platform while trying to appear sneaky and flying under the radar - we’re talking about groups outright advertising their wares in the group name: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/04/deleted-facebook-cybercr...
> Some had existed on Facebook for up to nine years; approximately ten percent of them had plied their trade on the social network for more than four years.
> KrebsOnSecurity’s research was far from exhaustive: For the most part, I only looked at groups that promoted fraudulent activities in the English language. Also, I ignored groups that had fewer than 25 members. As such, there may well be hundreds or thousands of other groups who openly promote fraud as their purpose of membership but which achieve greater stealth by masking their intent with variations on or mispellings of different cyber fraud slang terms.
I have my own personal experience with this. I came across a page promoting Snapchat (and maybe other services) hacking services that in exchange for a fee claimed it would email you the credentials of the target account, with plenty of obviously compromised accounts posting comments claiming it works. Obviously very illegal in the vast majority of jurisdictions, but the double whammy there is that the service was itself a scam.
Reporting the aforementioned group and a few of the fake comments yielded that none of this activity goes against their community standards.
[+] [-] shashashasha___|2 years ago|reply
> They are knowingly allowing card fraud and other cybercrime groups to operate openly on there.
i wonder if you believe yourself when you write stuff like that? as if that company has a policy to allow fraud and cybercrime and they really believe its good for their business.
if you do... well... watch out from those black helicopters
[+] [-] throwawayadvsec|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|2 years ago|reply
The most annoying part is there has been zero communication from Freenom - not a single email. They also never replied when I asked what was going on.
[+] [-] matoro|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|2 years ago|reply
If anyone at all has a way to combat this stuff that doesn't rely on "bad actors need disposable identities to get around blocks and don't usually have money" will basically win the internet.
[+] [-] thayne|2 years ago|reply
> Unfortunately, the lawsuits have had little effect on the overall number of phishing attacks and phishing-related domains, which have steadily increased in volume over the years.
> Piscitello said despite the steep drop in phishing domains coming out of Freenom, the alternatives available to phishers are many.
[+] [-] IMSAI8080|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8organicbits|2 years ago|reply
The best list I'm seeing is: https://free-for.life/#/?id=domains
[+] [-] obituary_latte|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caretoelaborate|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nubinetwork|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipaddr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemazerino|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amerkhalid|2 years ago|reply
Spending couple of minutes on the site, it became obvious that it is a scam website. Confirmed further by another search on domain[2]. I wanted to report it but there is no easy way to report this. So I gave up and hope no one falls for it.
[1]: https:// littletikes . savemoney . store [2]: https://forums.dansdeals.com/index.php?topic=119138.0
[+] [-] Thoreandan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayval|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KomoD|2 years ago|reply