What a charity, someone asks a question about how the donated money is spent and they get immediately banned, the person mentioned above constantly attacks their own members and even to try to humiliate an obviously desperately ill person and they are allowed to stay as if nothing has happened, I’ve stated before elsewhere that in my opinion this charity is corrupt and lacks morals, people need to decide for themselves.
TK DOMAINS
By most measures New Zealand’s remote colony of Tokelau is paradise but on the internet it has become the world’s most dangerous domain for surfers.
Californian based internet security company McAfee this week said websites with Tokelau’s dot-TK domain were “unusually risky”.
Many of the fake websites and emails offering “security alerts” from banks around the world arrive via a Tokelau or Niue top level domain (TLD) address.
A senior New Zealand diplomat trying to help Tokelau and Niue told Fairfax Media both have lost control of their internet domains and, along with New Zealand, risk losing their international reputations.
Niue’s site has become infamous for hardcore pornography while Tokelau, which has just 1300 people, no airport and no capital, is synonymous with computer viruses, spyware and malicious software covertly dumped onto computer main drives.
“I don’t think anybody in either country would have wanted to see this sort of thing happen, both in terms of reputational risk and in terms of the type of activity that would go on in these domains,” Tokelau administrator David Payton said.
“It goes against the whole culture and philosophy of Niue and Tokelau.”
McAfee said they had surveyed 8.1 million of the most trafficked websites in the world that account for more than 95 per cent of web traffic. They were tested for a variety of “unwanted behaviours” and rated by red and yellow flags.
They found that 4.1 per cent of all the sites had red or yellow warnings but it ranged from a low 0.1 per cent for Finland and 0.6 per cent for New Zealand to 10.1 per cent for Tokelau.
It warned that Tokelau was ideal for scammers who use phishing which is designed to create shadow bank websites to collect log-ons and passwords.
McAfee said Tokelau and Niue were giving out domains for free.
“Scammers, particularly those employing phishing, exploit or spam tactics, are subject to frequent blacklisting and so they must register and discard many domains very quickly,” McAfee said.
Niue makes it even easier by allowing anonymous registration. Samoa and Tonga were also considered risky websites.
Tokelau’s web domain site is owned by a Dutch company, Dot TK, in turned owned by Taloha, Inc, a private corporation based in Amsterdam and controlled by an e-commerce expert, Joost Zuurbier. Niue, which has around 1700 people, has an estimated three million pages of pornography on the internet.
Niue’s TLD is owned by .NU Domain, owned by a Massachusetts based business man Bill Semich.
Mr Payton said the ability of both Niue and Tokelau to deal with the issues was limited as the domains had been contracted out at a time when neither knew much about the internet.
“They were given out some years ago and it wasn’t until sometime later the significance became obvious,” he said.
“Neither now has control over the domain name, and are now being caught by the implications of the activities of those who run the domain names.” Mr Payton questioned whether either territory ever had much control over their TLDs.
“The manner in which domain names were made available internationally, left some international entities, such as small countries that had very little involvement in the internet, very much at a disadvantage compared with those that were very aware of the potential for their use.”
Tokelau’s Telecommunications Minister Kolouei O’Brien told Stuff.co.nz that Dot TK had an automated mechanism in place that terminated those trying to put scams and - other scandalous activities - on websites. He said they were identifying and chucking out about 3000 every day.
Tokelau’s telecom company Teletok had continuously told the web operator that it would not be allowed to use it for pornography and other illegal activities.
“In its path towards self determination the Government of Tokelau refutes any claim that it will ever compromise its national integrity at any cost,” Mr O’Brien said.
Niue’s deputy secretary of government, Justin Kamupala, said in a statement their capacity to deal with the issue was “very limited” as Mr Semich controlled it all.
“The Government of Niue will be communicating with Mr Semich in an attempt to resolve this issue,” Mr Kamupala said. “However it can not give any guarantee as to whether or not the appropriate measures can be implemented in order to bring about the desired result.”
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has allocated each state a two letter TLD, such as NZ for New Zealand. Normally a cooperative grouping control the onward sale of domain names using the TLD.
In 2000 the small south Pacific island of Pitcairn won a protracted battle with ICANN to win back its TLD from a Channel Island company.
World ranking for percentage of dangerous websites
1. Tokelau, .TK, 10.1 per cent
3. Samoa, .WS, 5.8 per cent
13. Tuvalu, .TV, 3 per cent
14. Tonga, .TO, 3 per cent
21. Niue, .NU, 2.1 per cent
48. New Zealand, .NZ, 0.6 per cent
65. Australia, .AU, 0.2 per cent
The generic TLD for information .info is the second most dangerous domain at 7.5 per cent
Fairfax Media, New Zealand
If you have even an inkling of how the internet works and the dangers to your computer from going through domains such as this you would not use domains such as TK, so if you are hit with a virus or some malware or get directed to porn sites after visiting the link above, which I REALLY don’t recommend then you can thank the owner of the forum, it’s a place he is so proud of he has been spamming many web sites with links to it for people to view his handiwork, so this is a plug or advertisement if you will, for Rob Kay’s site and no way an attempt to show that he is just a pathetic person with a vendetta running. Hope that’s OK Rob?
