Greg Falken

“Is this email legit?” I get this question a lot and most of the time the answer is no. Many of them are simply scams, companies trying to sell sketchy SEO programs or miracle medical devices. Others are more actively criminal, hoping to trick you into providing personal information, such as the login credentials to one of your online accounts. These techniques, known as phishing, are becoming more sophisticated every day.

These days, almost every website sends email. Whether it’s from a contact form, e-commerce purchase or new post notification, email is usually the best option for communicating with visitors after they’ve left your site. So it’s a problem when those emails are treated as spam, or worse, not delivered at all.

Every year about this time, the good folks at Nordpass publish the Top 200 Most Common Passwords. This list provides endless fodder for tech journalists (and bloggers) to question why the same awful passwords keep showing up year after year. And by awful we mean so easy to guess or quick to crack that there might as well be no password at all.

Even though you don’t technically “own” it, a domain name is yours to use for as long as you maintain the registration. Registrations are handled by companies called domain registrars, who are supposed to facilitate the registration and management of domains. So, what are the things that a good domain registrar needs to do?