Re: .edu.com domain

["Pace, Guy" <gpace () CIS CTC EDU>]

I find it odd that the educational institutions must now plead with a
sleazy leads marketer to have their schools removed from site, since the
(modified) URL's were hijacked by it in the first place. From a purely
marketing perspective, what a strategy!

In case it wasn't posted here earlier, the edu.com domain became
available through an oversight and was snapped up by this outfit. It was
supposed to be reserved and protected for just this reason, but someone
dropped the ball. It is essentially way to do domain hijacking and I'm
completely surprised that there isn't more concern expressed here.

With the numbers and political/legal power potential represented by the
institutions here, there should be a way to pull that registration from
Vantage Media Corporation and permanently block future possible
registrations of edu.com. What if it had been an internet porn merchant
-- off shore?

At least we can all be thankful that the company is taking the sites out
voluntarily. The question is, who will get the domain registration next
if Vantage Media drops the ball or doesn't survive this round? 

Guy L. Pace, CISSP
Security Administrator
Center for Information Services (CIS)
3101 Northup Way, Suite 100
Bellevue, WA 98004
425-803-9724

gpace () cis ctc edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Bourne [mailto:walter () COLUMBIA EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 2:39 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] .edu.com domain

It's possible to get 'off'.  Try
<http://msu.edu.com/>

Our Admissions and Counsel are doing a cease-and-desist.

==Walter Bourne
  Columbia University
  IT Security & Policy

--On Wednesday, April 05, 2006 15:55 -0500 Graham Toal <gtoal () utpa edu>
wrote:

: > I do not know if they actually forward
: > the information, it appears the primary purpose is to harvest
: > information for marketing.
: 
: More likely harvest leads to sell back to the Universities.
: And I would imagine if you don't advertise with them,
: some rival university will be prominent when someone
: stumbles on their site looking for you.
: 
: Here's a good article on their business model:
: 
: http://www.jayweintraub.com/2005/08/trends_report_a.html
: 
: G