What is the appropriate way to deal with inappropriate content on the internet?

The internet is a great place to find content of all sorts. Videos of cats doing crazy stunts, memes, thought provoking lifestyle messages. But this rich availability means ease of access to a wide variety of inappropriate content. Inappropriate content means any material that is disturbing, improper, and just wrong. It can be images of real or simulated violence or of a sexually explicit nature. Recently there have been concerns raised around disturbing YouTube videos. These strongly resemble v... Read More

Towards a 100% encrypted web, the new challenges of HTTPS

Between Mars, 2016 and Mars, 2017, Let’s Encrypt has issued 15 270 SSL certificates containing “PayPal” term, 14 766 of these certificates were issued for domains leading to phishing websites. It’s the result of the recent analysis led by Vincent Lynch, SSL expert.     Lynch was closely interested in this case, after an interesting article published by Eric Lawrence (Google Chrome Security Team) in January 2017, the image above is from this article named “Certified Malice “which expos... Read More

The launch of .AFRICA

After more than five years of legal dealings and battles, South African organization .ZA Central Registry (ZACR) is now designed to commercialize the internet extension “.AFRICA” which will be opened to all. As presented by Koffi Djossou, member of UNIFORUM ZACR, future domain names in .AFRICA will “promote African companies, people and culture on Internet”. President of the African Union Commission Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, has already saluted the end of this battle as the moment when Africa “has... Read More

Alibaba’s use of technology to fight counterfeit reaps first rewards

In December 2016 Alibaba was placed on a US blacklist for fakes. A US industry watchdog called the company’s Taobao website (the world’s largest e-commerce platform) a “notorious” market for counterfeiting and piracy. Now Alibaba is diligently combatting this label. Via a program called Operation “Cloud Sword” big data technology such as advanced algorithms, machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), and mapping technologies, is used to generate clues to help identify and take down ... Read More

Has President Trump’s executive order on ‘Public Safety’ killed off Privacy Shield?

Governments rightly accord great attention to the importance of privacy and human rights but are also cognisant that there are situations where public authorities require access to the content of electronic communications. Three decades of negotiations and agreements on what constitutes acceptable levels of sharing of personal data and communications between the US and Europe resulted at the start of 2016 in the Privacy Shield agreement which provided obligations to protect and monito... Read More

HTTPS and SSL: Google continues its offensive

Chrome 53 launched on 31 August 2016 and with it Google is continuing its offensive for a safer internet. With its Chrome navigator, Google signals even more clearly when as site does not use httpS on its landing page. And the version to come will continue in this vein barring purely and simply HTTP with a Red cross. This  ‘ugly defacement’ will be difficult to accept on corporate websites, in particular well-known brands. Firefox has already announced a similar measure. Add to that the htt... Read More

Sponsored Links – an opportunity and a threat to your brand

Title : Adwords – Author : Christophe Benoit – Photo : licence CC BY 2.0 – www.tyseo.net What is a “Sponsored Link”? It’s a paid advertisement in the form of a hypertext link that shows up on search results pages. The ads are typically for products and services that are generally or very specifically related to the keywords in the search query. The most well known sponsored links, Google Adwords, is an advertising service offered by Google for businesses wanting to display ads on the search engi... Read More

Why are Dot Brands dragging their feet?

Ok so here’s the thing, we’re over 2 years into the new gTLD rollout now, a new era of the Internet, and everything seems to be going swimmingly…. Or is it? On the face of it, momentum is building. Over 16 million domain names registered in the past 2 years and 60% of them would still have been available under a .com e.g. nameshield.website and its .com equivalent nameshieldwebsite.com. That’s great because it means that New gTLD domain names are being registered instead of the equivalent .com. ... Read More

Car Brands: are they taking a leading role in the new Internet?

A ‘plethora’ is defined as a “large or excessive amount of something” and is usually followed by the qualifier “of.” Car manufacturers certainly fall into that category, as I found out recently when looking at replacing my worn-out old jalopy. A plethora can also be used to describe domain extension, with the advent of new gTLDs (where the term after the final ‘dot’ can be almost anything) there is certainly a plethora of those nowadays! This naturally led me to pose the question “How many of on... Read More

What has become of the big dreams of the big .BRANDs ?

In 2012, ICANN received 643 applications for restricted use generic Top Level Domains extensions by brand owners. Recently, a surprising proportion of these, so called, .BRAND applications have been withdrawn, often resulting in the loss of the entire application fee ($185,000). Why have these brand owners taken the decision to relinquish control over their very own piece of the Internet infrastructure? Is this a tactical response to a strategic direction or are they simply lacking the ideas an... Read More