The purpose of DNS is to spread scams
- ID
- 21955
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 06 Sep 2026, 10:40 PM
- Fetched
- 06 Sep 2026, 10:45 PM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/6/the-purpose-of-dns-is-to-spread-scams/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 7.0
- Created
- 06 Sep 2026, 10:45 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_agent_userssaas_founders
What happened
Terence Eden highlights an Interisle report showing 85 million new gTLD registrations in 2025, with 8.5 million blocklisted by May 2025. The abuse rate floor is estimated at 10%, likely closer to 20%—meaning roughly one in five newly registered domains are scams. ICANN has reportedly been discussing this for years without resolution.
Why it matters
If you build systems that trust or rank domains by recency or existence—email allowlists, link previews, agent web-fetching, or user-generated content filters—assume ~20% of new gTLD domains are malicious. Add domain-age and reputation checks before treating any newly registered domain as trustworthy, especially for AI agents that autonomously fetch URLs.
Discussion angle
For AI agent builders specifically: if your agent fetches arbitrary URLs or follows links from user input, what domain-reputation or age checks should gate that fetch before it becomes a scam-delivery mechanism?