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bjttoday at 5:19 PM2 repliesview on HN

It's not about the .online TLD being "weird". The problem is that it was free. That's going to attract a swarm of fraudsters, spammers, etc, and then turn into a strong "this is probably fraud" signal in all kinds of fraud scoring systems.

There are lots of domains out there other than .com that are just fine.


Replies

fckgwtoday at 6:00 PM

.online, .top, .xyz. info and .shop are some of the top TLDs that scammers use, precisely because of their rock bottom registrar fees that make them attractive for sites that have a shelf life of a few hours or a few days before being blocked. As a result, many places have a blanket "suspicious" flag for fresh domains under these TLDs.

If you plan on building a legit site, do not use any of these cheap TLDs.

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garganzoltoday at 5:48 PM

Probably this is what's happened here. Either the OP's domain was previously used for shady activities, or the almost-free stigma puts the whole .TLD in the grey list of high-risk assets. Probably is also explains the nuclear behavior of the registrar (suspension).

Free is good, but sometimes it's not.