Kentucky Basketball: It's Wildcat Tip-off Time!

That’s worth a little photoshop action…

… I do want to mention a couple of things about proxy domains.

Proxy domain service gets a bad name due to spammers, pornographers and malware disseminators who use such services. Proxy domains are of course mostly legal (there is a 9th circuit court of appeals decision out there which casts some doubt on that, though) and ethical when used properly, much like the aliases people use to hide their names on the Internet.

One way you can check to see if there is a probability of malicious intent it to look up the whois record of the website in question. You can do that using a web service or, if you run Unix or Linux, merely by opening a command prompt and typng “whois maplestreetpress.com” This will give you the ICANN whois record, in this case of the proxy provider for MSP

Domains By Proxy is a reputable provider of proxy domains for several of the more notable registrars, in this case Godaddy.com. Godaddy is probably the largest domain registrar out there, and DBP is a Better Business Bureau and Trust e certified provider with an excellent reputation for not allowing nefarious uses of their proxy service.

There are many good business reasons for using proxy domains, not the least of which are inundation by spammers (it is difficult and expensive to block a determined spam attack), a desire to keep private the ownership of a politically unpopular activity or person that might affect business, prevent revealing your address to others (particularly small businesses), etc. Many political bloggers desire the anonymity provided by proxy domains to protect their businesses from impact by their political opinions.

There are, of course, counter arguments to most of these, like renting post-office boxes and so forth, but I find them generally unpersuasive. The fact is, DBP is almost like having no domain proxy at all, since a simple email or phone call with a complaint is usually enough to get the information anyway. It is a thin veneer, but it is much better, in some respects, than exposing your personal information to the Internet. DBP has almost no tolerance for any sort of abuse of their service, which is why if you have nefarious motives, using them would not be a good idea. The short version – all proxy domain providers are not created equal.

In my judgment, operating system providers like Microsoft and some antivirus providers have become excessively paranoid about many things. This paranoia is reflected in a security warning every time I try to open a simple zip file on XP, an annoyance I know I could remove with a simple command, but which I desire to leave in to remind me constantly why I detest using Microsoft software any more than I absolutely have to. Apple is better, but only a little. This is more a reflection of the general lack of sophistication of the end user, but I digress.

In the end, what we have here is something similar to coach Calipari – a mostly-honorable Internet service with a perception problem. :-)

Sorry about the screed, but I have been using the Internet since the early 1990’s when the Worldwide Web was still mostly a dream.

Hope you enjoy the book.