Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Don't blindly trust the TLD

I have seen two sources now suggesting that information on web sites that end with .gov, .edu, or .org is likely to be trustworthy. Those first two are virtually always legit - you have to actually prove yourself as an appropriate type of entity (US government department or higher education institution,respectively) to register them. .org web sites, on the other hand, can be registered by absolutely anyone, for a few dollars per year. For instance, see this satirical warning website about dihydrogen monoxide (water). They even have a DMOZ organization title in Google search results.

Even .edu web sites frequently have "home folders" where teachers and sometimes students can host static content of their choosing. Though the people writing that content are certainly very smart, the work isn't likely to be peer-reviewed.

Basically, looking at the web site's top-level domain isn't enough to verify the trustworthiness of an arbitrary document under it. More importantly, please don't spread the overgeneralization that all .org web sites are high-quality.

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