Rumors that ICANN is looking at a possibility of having some new TLDs find more ground after it came to public awareness that ICANN is exploring potential faults of domain name TLDs that would resemble file extensions. On the agenda there are: .EXE, TXT, .PDF, .MP3 and .ZIP among others.

ICANN investigated this question by conferring with Operating Systems and Browser developers and the Security and Stability Advisory Committee. Some of the program developers are known to assert that some extension-like domain name TLDs would cause confusion, especially among Windows users. However, it was also repeated that .COM – the king of domain name TLDs is also a popular file extension for DOS Operating System.

The biggest issue is that introducing these TLDs would open a new door for scammers and virus developers because they would be able to hide a malware in a string that resembles a domain name but is in fact a file name.

At this stage ICANN is only looking at a option to add new domain name TLDs and the discussions about file extensions should not be taken as a threat to online community. It is almost certain that there will not be any dangerous.exe domain names in nearest future.

The new discussion has produced a diverse resonance from public. Those in possession of good quality .COMs are furious because adding more TLDs would mean their domain name values would drop. On the other side of the road are those who haven’t managed to secure good domain names for whatever reason. They would like to receive their small piece of cake by having a one-word domain at last, even if the TLD is absurd.