Re:The GNU Name System
by MichaelCollins on Monday July 25, 2022 @08:17AM
(#32223300)
The apparent dichotomy of either using a search engine or typing out the full domain is confusing. What I do 99% of the time is type two or three letters into the address bar and let the rest of the address complete from my browser history. Giving those two or three letters to google to doesn't seem like it would do anything to improve the process, it's just a default that browsers foist on users because Google pays the browser developer for it.
That is how people use domain names, but people are a very small subset of the DNS "customers" - all applications and websites hit DNS quite often.
I stopped using qr codes when I realized how easy it is for someone to put a sticker over an existing code and send me to a phishing site. Certainly, I can do it super cautiously, but it definitely seems like an easy attack vector.
They can also put a sticker over the domain name, and itβs not necessarily going to be clear in the moment if mylocalrestaurant.co is invalid and it should be mylocalrestaurant.com instead.
Nearly all of my QR usage is untrusted links anyways so it doesn't make any difference to me.
> Although almost all users just use a search engine.
This is literally what I'm saying and the main point I'm addressing in the second and third paragraph of the comment you are replying to.
However, you make a very good point with QR code: this is another argument for why the actual domain name is not that important.
The last main thing that I use domains for is verification (is this really "google.com"?) but even that is 1. Not effective (yes, I am definitely "goog1e.com") and 2. Mostly replaced by my browser doing the check for me (for example via my password manager which only fills in credentials for the correct domain).