Issue 173 - 16th December 2004

Canadian registry warns against phishing scam

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has issued a warning to registrants of .ca domains to be wary of emails requesting their account usernames and passwords. These misleading emails, originating from compliance@cira.cc, claim that the registrant's domain may be suspended if they do not comply. CIRA encourages recipients of such emails to forward a copy to security-advisory@cira.ca. Those who have actually replied with their account information should contact their registrar immediately.

This fairly recent, and increasingly prevalent, type of scam email (often referred to as a "phish") more commonly appears to come from a bank, requesting online account information.

ICANN gives preliminary approval to .jobs and .mobi

ICANN announced on Monday that it would begin discussions with the companies who have bid to operate two new sponsored Top Level Domains (sTLD), .jobs and .mobi. The .mobi concept is sponsored by Microsoft, Nokia and T-Mobile and is designed for webpages that would appear on mobile phones. If approved, .jobs will be used mainly for human resource applications.

The potential sTLD operators have each paid ICANN a $45,000 fee. Initial approval is no guarantee the domains will actually come into existence.

.vn coming in early 2005

The Vietnamese Registry operator has indicated that second-level .vn domains will be made available to the public very early in 2005. NetNames is taking pre-registrations for .vn now and requests must be submitted by Friday 24th December.

Orders can be placed at www.netnames.com.