Thread: .br.com is not Brazil ccTLD

Folks
Watch out for a 'misguided' domain name sales from centralnic selling subdomains in the guise of alternative TLD's.

So don't get tempted to purchase yourname.br.com for $40 - since you are purchasing a subdomain (yourname) for a domain like br.com purchased by centralnic.

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Official ccTLD is .br and .com.br is 3rd level ccTLD. Incidentally .IN doesn't have .com.in ccTLD

Thanks for the warning, pubdomains.in.

I'm sorry to hear people have fallen for this. Unfortunately, it means they didn't do enough research about the domain extension they were intending to purchase.

Good post pubdomains.in!

.co.tv is another fake domain extension to avoid.

Here's another reason why opting for a sub-domain is a bad idea. If one sub-domain gets reported as a phishing site, then it's possible that Microsoft will mark *all* the sub-domains as bad apples:

Anyone familiar the US.com and UK.com domain names will know that the owners, UK based Centralnic, sell sub domains of these TLD’s as domains in their own right. Earlier today however (and up to and including the time Im writing this), anyone attempting to visit ANY of the 2.5m sub domains indexed using the Internet Explorer browser will have been presented with the following warning message-

This is a reported phishing website
Internet Explorer has determined that this is a reported phishing website. Phishing websites impersonate other sites and attempt to trick you into revealing personal or financial information.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.

Source: Is it me or is everyone else stupid?

Centralnic and its customers are likely having a bad week.

Hi All,

I hope you don't mind me commenting. I hope I'm not stepping into a hornet's nest here. I actually work for CentralNic (since 2001) and want to be available to answer questions.

We did have an issue with Microsoft but I understand it has now been resolved. These things happen. Some years ago, I discovered that (without warning) all email that was coming from the UK was being blocked by Verizon (which was my ISP). This occured for over 2.5 weeks, without any warning to end users in the U.S. (like me).

Verizon mistakenly made the assumption that because a few spammers in the UK were generating a huge amount of spam, that the best solution was to block all UK IP addresses. I was mysteriously missing email from my coworkers for several weeks. Eventually there were enough complaints that they fixed it.

As to the claim that br.com is the ccTLD for Brazil, we've never made that claim and if there are any of our resellers that do make that claim please let us know and we will talk to them to correct it. We are simply an alternative domain and we have several hundred thousand paying registrants who are very happy with our products, many who have used our domains since 1995.

Anyway, I just want to be available to answer questions and engage. Certainly you have a right to disagree and I will respect that.

Sincerely,

Joe

Hello Joe, welcome to INForum.

Originally Posted by joe

We did have an issue with Microsoft but I understand it has now been resolved.

No doubt both CentralNic and its customers are pleased about this.

Originally Posted by joe

As to the claim that br.com is the ccTLD for Brazil, we've never made that claim and if there are any of our resellers that do make that claim please let us know and we will talk to them to correct it. We are simply an alternative domain and we have several hundred thousand paying registrants who are very happy with our products, many who have used our domains since 1995.

With respect, I think the problem stems from the fact that your website is a little misleading. I don't see anything on the site that makes it clear that customers will be ordering a sub-domain only.

Originally Posted by joe

Anyway, I just want to be available to answer questions and engage. Certainly you have a right to disagree and I will respect that.

That's great, thanks.

Hi Ceres,

Thanks for the comments and the opportunity to explain our positions.

With respect, I think the problem stems from the fact that your website is a little misleading. I don't see anything on the site that makes it clear that customers will be ordering a sub-domain only.

This is where we have a disagreement. All domains (except TLDs) around the world are technically "sub-domains". In the UK, people register domain.co.uk. That is a third-level (sub) domain and by Internet and all accepted technical standards, equal. The same practice is done in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and many other countries around the world. In fact, even .com and .in registrations are technically sub domains (at the second-level) of the TLD, .com or .in.

SLDs like US.COM work exactly the same as Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .COM or .NET and are supported by all existing e-mail systems. In his testimony to congress on 2-8-2001, A. Michael Froomkin, an expert on the Internet, testified that, "there is no technical difference between the root file containing the information about TLDs and a second-level domain file."

To give a little background of how CentralNic came about...

CentralNic was started in 1995, trading then, under the name of Nomination. At that time, our former CEO, who owned an ISP in London, registered UK.COM for the company. He met Jon Postel at an Internet conference, who suggested that we allow people to register sub-domains on the UK.COM domain.

The idea was to compete with the impending rollout of the ccTld, .UK. Our CEO proceeded to do just that. We started a sub-domain registry in 1995 and began taking registrations like "WHATEVER.UK.COM". It worked, became quite accepted in the U.K. and the company grew.

In 2000 we changed our name to CentralNic, Ltd. and acquired the rights to several other short, country-specific, domain names such as US.COM, EU.COM, and DE.COM. The business has grown significantly. Our domains are sold at several ICANN Accredited Registrars including eNom, Dotster, Network Solutions, Register.com, and Name.com.

We are very careful not to "mislead", however we feel perfectly justified, after 15 years of uninterrupted service in having earned the right to call our domains, "domains", nothing less and nothing more.

P.S. I'm not trying to sell anything here, just hoping to explain what we are about and how we came to where we are today.