At the beginning of May, Google released eight new top-level domains (TLDs)—the suffixes at the end of URLs, like “.com” or “.uk.” These little addendums were developed decades ago to expand and organize URLs, and over the years, the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has loosened restrictions on TLDs so organizations like Google can bid to sell access to more of them. But while Google’s announcement included light-hearted offerings like “.dad” and “.nexus,” it also debuted a pair of TLDs that are uniquely poised to invite phishing and other types of online scamming: “.zip” and “.mov”.
The two stand out because they are also common file extension names. The former, .zip, is ubiquitous for data compression, while .mov is a video format developed by Apple. The concern, which is already starting to play out, is that URLs that…
