[At-Large] DomainIncite : Is this why WhatsApp hates some TLDs but not others?
Karl Auerbach
karl at cavebear.com
Wed Sep 13 19:24:23 UTC 2023
I tend to agree with Evan that many, perhaps most, of the new TLDs are
not much better than toys to inflate various corporate egos or
speculative dreams.
However, it is not ICANN's job to dictate what on the Internet is useful
and what is not.
But ICANN can be helpful even when it is not authoritative.
Reading a root zone file published by IANA (operated by ICANN) is way to
tire one's eyeballs.
ICANN could publish a nice Linux/*BSD shell script for makers of phones,
systems, and apps that did the following:
1. Pulled a copy of the latest IANA root zone file. (Eg a simple
"wget" command)
2. Parsed the records of that file into a sequence of
<name>:<ipv4-address> or <name>:<ipv6-address pairs>
3. Iterated through those pairs to perform a set of "dig" queries
using the <name> against the <ipv4-address> or <ipv6-address> (as
appropriate) to evaluate whether there is indeed an operating name
server at the given address that knows about the purported name. (This
could be extended to dig through the NS records and check whether those
servers are also operational and valid.)
ICANN could then make this script available to makers with a cover not
that asks "Is your list of top level domains complete? Here's a tool to
help you check."
(If I were writing this, I'd do it as a two-level hierarchy of scripts,
the bottom-most would do the dig based name checks given a sequence of
name-address pairs. That would be a tool used by a higher level script
that fetched and parsed a root zone file to produce the name-address pairs.)
There's additional things that could be evaluated, such as whether the
vendor is properly handling things like DNSSEC, DoH or DoT, whether
connectivity to the name servers works over both IPv4 and IPv6 (this is
different than whether the servers and the vendor's code properly handle
IPv4 and IPv6 address queries.)
ICANN could even put this kind of tool into Apps for things like iPhones
and Android phones (and for other platforms) to make it easier for
vendors to run these checks (and for users to check whether their
vendors are testing or being lazy.)
--karl--
On 9/13/23 7:55 AM, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large wrote:
> Folks,
>
> While I agree with Evan that most Internet users don’t know and don’t
> care about some less used TLDs - in the same way as most drivers and
> car buyers don’t know and don’t care about some less used car brands -
> I am missing something about the “problem" that started this thread, i.e.:
>
> */Developers of major pieces of internet software, including the
> world’s most-popular messaging app, may be relying on seriously
> outdated lists of top-level domains./*
>
>
> There is one single authoritative source of information, maintained by
> IANA, that is the root zone file. Why on earth should ICANN maintain a
> second one? This fancy tendency by developers (I can say that, as I
> have been in that business for decades) to rely on alternate sources
> of information and/or make incorrect assumptions (like assuming that
> TLDs are max 3 chars long, except for ARPA) is the root cause of most
> of the problems.
>
> By the way, when we say “One world, one Internet” we implicitly
> condemn having alternate or secondary sources of information about the
> Internet components.
>
> Cheers,
> Roberto
>
>
>> On 13.09.2023, at 15:50, Evan Leibovitch via At-Large
>> <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
>>
>> Can't say that I'm surprised. Welcome to the totally predictable
>> consequences of ICANN's:
>>
>> * Insisting that it's not a regulator
>> * Making "global" decisions without weight of international treaty
>> * Expanding the gTLD space *well* beyond that which benefits
>> Internet users.
>>
>> At-Large's most useful activity is to document and publicize the list
>> of gTLDs unrecognized by the Android library, and to encourage ICANN
>> to engage with Android developers to update the library.
>>
>> It should be telling that nobody has noticed this problem that has
>> existed since 2015, and that the news appeared in an industry news
>> site rather than in the IT mainstream. That tells me that most
>> Internet end-users don't know and don't care about these other domains.
>>
>> There's a lesson here to be learned.
>>
>> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
>> @evanleibovitch / @el56
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 10:43 AM Dev Anand Teelucksingh via At-Large
>> <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
>>
>> "*Developers of major pieces of internet software, including the
>> world’s most-popular messaging app, may be relying on seriously
>> outdated lists of top-level domains.*
>>
>> That’s the picture that seems to be emerging from one new gTLD
>> operator’s quest to discover why WhatsApp doesn’t recognize its
>> TLD, and many others including major dot-brands, as valid."
>>
>> ....When most social media apps detect the user has inputted a
>> URL or domain name, they automatically “linkify” it so it can be
>> easily clicked or tapped without the need for copy/paste.
>>
>> But when Rami Schwartz of new gTLD .tube discovered that .tube
>> URLs sent via WhatsApp, said to have two billion users, were not
>> being linkified, despite the TLD being delegated by ICANN almost
>> eight years ago, he set out to find out why.
>>
>> Schwartz compiled a spreadsheet (.xlsx) listing which gTLDs are
>> recognized by WhatsApp and which are not and discovered a rough
>> cut-off point in November 2015. TLDs delegated before then are
>> linkified, those delegated after were not......This means that,
>> for example, .microsoft domains linkify but .amazon and .apple
>> domains do not; .asia domains linkify but .africa and .arab
>> domains do not; .london works but .abudhabi doesn’t. Even
>> .verisign missed the cut-off.
>>
>> If WhatsApp users include a “www.” or “http://” then the app will
>> linkify the domain, even if the specified TLD does not exist.
>>
>> .....During the course of a discussion
>> <https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/issues/1807> on the web
>> site of the Public Suffix List — which maintains an open-source
>> list of all TLDs and the levels at which names may be registered
>> — it was discovered that the problem may be deeper rooted than
>> the WhatsApp app.
>>
>> It turns out a library in the Android operating system
>> <https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/main/+/main:frameworks/base/core/java/android/util/Patterns.java;l=114>
>> contains a hard-coded list of valid TLDs which hasn’t been
>> updated since November 24, 2015"
>>
>> Read full article :
>> https://domainincite.com/29054-is-this-why-whatsapp-hates-some-tlds-but-not-others
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Dev Anand Teelucksingh
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