Well, that's to some degree affected by the contents of this other article that came on the home page of HN the very next day. [1]
That article describes Facebook having brought suit against freenom for giving out free domains, because they were primarily used by criminals. There will be another free domain provider. There always is. But, this also makes the point that the number and impact of these free domains is huge. Spammers use them to spam, and this is one reason why domains should not be considered to have any gravitas as an auth mechanism for identity.
From that article:
Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for
five so-called “country code top level domains”
(ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African
Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea;
.ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau.
Freenom has always waived the registration fees for
domains in these country-code domains, presumably as a
way to encourage users to pay for related services, such
as registering a .com or .net domain, for which Freenom
does charge a fee.
On March 3, 2023, social media giant Meta sued Freenom
in a Northern California court, alleging cybersquatting
violations and trademark infringement. The lawsuit also
seeks information about the identities of 20 different
“John Does” — Freenom customers that Meta says have been
particularly active in phishing attacks against
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users.
and
“The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services
are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because
Freenom provides free domain name registration services
and shields its customers’ identity, even after being
presented with evidence that the domain names are being
used for illegal purposes,” the complaint charges. “Even
after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by
its customers, Freenom continues to license new
infringing domain names to those same customers.”
That article describes Facebook having brought suit against freenom for giving out free domains, because they were primarily used by criminals. There will be another free domain provider. There always is. But, this also makes the point that the number and impact of these free domains is huge. Spammers use them to spam, and this is one reason why domains should not be considered to have any gravitas as an auth mechanism for identity.
From that article:
and [1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/03/sued-by-meta-freenom-hal...