Before explaining about wrong domain names, we’d better clarify what’s meant by ‘correct’ domain names.

Appropriate or matching might be a better description than ‘correct’ but you can choose your own descriptive word.

The internet domain name chosen by a business or organisation or individual should match whatever they are selling or publishing or what they are.

That’s simple to understand.

Suppose you know there is a UK company called Flowersby, you can search using a search engine to find their website or could guess e.g. www.flowersby.co.uk or www.flowersby.uk or flowersby.uk.com maybe.

If Flowersby is an international company then I might try www.flowersby.com

Business, organisations and individuals normally pick domain names that make it easy for them to be found.

If I’m a UK company then I should choose a domain name ending in .co.uk or .uk or .uk.com

If I’m a local cricket club then I might pick e.g. “.cricket” or “.club”.

If I’m a non profit organisation then I would probably pick a domain suffix “.org”

Make it obvious to people what you are.

The Fightback Ninja has the domain name fightback.ninja for obvious reasons and because people associate qualities such as stealth, silent and deadly, expert etc. with the word Ninja.

Is there any harm in people picking unexpected or unusual domain names or domain name suffixes?

NO.

You have a wide range to choose from and often it’s the need to standout that leads to the choice of domain name.

So, what is a ‘wrong’ domain name?

Many domain names have restrictions on who can buy them. This is to ensure integrity and to stop unscrupulous people buying up domain names they think other people will want then forcing them to pay over the odds for the name.  e.g. .ac.uk is only for UK academic institutions.

“Wrong” domain names are where scammers pick up whatever domain names they can get cheaply, using an automated system and without any restrictions on who can buy them.

e.g. “.bid” was very popular with scammers as it is cheap and available to all. “.icu” is a new domain name that is becoming very popular with scammers for the same reasons.

Say you get a message about some piece of farm equipment but it’s from an email address ending in diabetescure.icu then you should be suspicious as it looks like a scammer has changed from selling diabetes scams to selling farm scams.

Likewise someone offering a price comparison but the email address ends in .xyz

If the domain name doesn’t match the apparent company name or subject of the message then be suspicious.

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