| > I'm slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake I've been coming to the same conclusion, for different reasons. I've been thinking of getting some meaningless domain name, like 5aeca67f937de276.net [1], and then using email addresses at that domain for the contact email or login email at as many places as possible. The idea is that if I use any meaningful name, there is a chance that some company will come along that does business under the same name, and will dispute my use of the domain name. At best, that will be a hassle to prove I'm not just cybersquatting, and at worst I could lose the domain and have to change my email at dozens, or even hundreds, of places. I'm probably safe on my current main domain, tzs.net, because I've had it for around 21 years [2], and every time someone has inquired about buying it from me, I've responded saying that although it does not have a large web presence and so may appear lightly used it is in fact used for a lot of non-public web stuff, and extensively used for email. I don't even ask what they are offering for it. I tell them it would simply be impractical for me to move to another domain, and so it is not for sale. This should make a reasonable case that I'm not cybersquatting. [1] Randomly generated by taking 64 bits from /dev/urandom and printing it in hex. I was thinking of 128 bits, but an email address that is @5aeca67f937de2760159265d458ba3d0.net might be too long for some poorly designed login forms. [2] The first owner was my employer at the time, which bought tzs.net, tzs.com, and tzs.org because my boss thought I might like them. When those expired a year later, they transferred to me whichever ones I wanted to keep. I kept tzs.net and the other two expired. |