[ISL]

Whoa. I use an xyz domain daily. This thread is eye-opening. Here's the reply from a SpamAssassin validator.

My domain is almost marked as spam solely on TLD grounds. What's the point of a TLD if it isn't a first-party domain on the internet?

  SpamAssassin Score: -0.599
  Message is NOT marked as spam
  Points breakdown: 
  -5.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI       RBL: Sender listed at https://www.dnswl.org/,
                              high trust
                              [***.***.***.*** listed in list.dnswl.org]
   0.0 URIBL_BLOCKED          ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to URIBL was
                              blocked.  See
                              http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/DnsBlocklists#dnsbl-block
                               for more information.
                              [URIs: ***.xyz]
  -0.0 RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H2      RBL: Average reputation (+2)
                              [***.***.***.*** listed in wl.mailspike.net]
   0.0 SPF_HELO_NONE          SPF: HELO does not publish an SPF Record
   2.0 PDS_OTHER_BAD_TLD      Untrustworthy TLDs
                              [URI: ***.xyz (xyz)]
   0.0 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message
   0.1 DKIM_SIGNED            Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily
                              valid
  -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU          Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from
                              author's domain
  -0.1 DKIM_VALID             Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature
   2.0 FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD_FP From abused NTLD
   0.5 FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD   From abused NTLD
   0.0 TVD_SPACE_RATIO        No description available.

[psutor]

I host my own email, and I got nothing but huge amounts of spam from .xyz domains, so I manually increased the SpamAssassin score for just .xyz to +4.0, as KAM was only adding 0.75 for it. It's the only TLD I've had to do that for.

Unfortunately for the people with legitimate uses, for email admins it's just a really easy (and arguably necessary) shortcut to block a ton of spam.

[ISL]

Alas, I will never be able to email you :).

[SilverRed]

I think the problem is that xyz was and maybe still is the cheapest TLD so it naturally attracts all the spammers.

[tim333]

There are free ones like .gq . They are probably worse!

[eythian]

On my personal mail server I have an SA rule that gives .xyz a high score (like a +5 or so) because a while back I was getting a huge amount of spam coming in from senders/URLs using domains of it. I haven't revisited that rule in a long time, and suspect it's not unlikely that others have done similar things.