.mail was a potential
generic top-level domain
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...
originally proposed by
The Spamhaus Project
The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and spam-related activity. The name ''spamhaus'', a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Li ...
in 2004, but rejected by
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...
. Its purpose was to enable responsible message recipients to reliably and efficiently identify and accept spam-free mailstreams. The ICANN Board issued a resolution on 4 February 2018 to cease the processing of all applications for the
.corp,
.home, and .mail gTLDs.
Proposed core functionality
''.mail'' was an attempt to reduce the
spam
Spam most often refers to:
* Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
...
problem by maintaining a list of domains authenticated as both not belonging to known spammers, and providing verified contact information. The sTLD would contain the actual hostnames of servers used to send mail. A ''.mail'' domain would only be able to be registered by a party that already owns a domain in another TLD which has been in operation for at least six months, and whose WHOIS information has been verified for accuracy. The domain was intended to be a publicly curated resources that could be updated as needed by the Internet.
Technical concerns
Investigation into the conflicts regarding gTLDs that are in use in internal networks was conducted at ICANN's request by
Interisle Consulting. The resulting report was to become known as the Name Collision issue, which was first reported at ICANN 47.
This decision affected the proposed
.corp,
.home, and .mail gTLDs.
See also
*
Top Level Domain
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains i ...
*
Generic top-level domain
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...
*
.corp rejected gTLD
*
.home rejected gTLD
References
External links
.mail ICANN WikiSpamhaus FAQ: The .mail TLD
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mail
Proposed top-level domains
Rejected proposed top-level domains
sv:Toppdomän#Generiska toppdomäner