Govt. faces risk in changing net addresses

By Roy Mathew

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, SEPT. 1. What happened to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting And Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad, can very well happen to the Kerala Government.

The Web site named after the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, went blue one fine morning, causing much embarrassment to him. Similarly, the domain (internet address), which was until recently that of the CDFD, is now that of a pornographic site. Any visitor who lands there will find it difficult to get free of the triple X stuff as the site is programmed to redirect visitors to other pornographic sites on exit.

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister had little control over what happened to the site named after him (nchandrababunaidu.com) as

it was run by a private person. The site used to carry Mr. Naidu's engagements and other activities. However, the domain soon changed hands and the new owner redirected it to a porn site. After official protests, the new owners who have a foreign address, stopped displaying the porn stuff. However, a `for sale' notice appeared in its place.

The CDFD ran into trouble as it went for a change of its Internet address. It initially had an American domain, www.cdfd.org, for its site. But, it recently set up its site with an Indian top level domain, www.cdfd.org.in. As the Centre let its old domain name go, someone running a porno site managed to acquire it. The biggest mistake of the Centre was to drop the domain quickly without any `decommissioning'. When the Centre abandoned its American domain, search engines and many other sites were still listing it as the address of its official site. This was because the search engines usually take one to three months to update their indexes. So, all the visitors searching for the CDFD site landed on the porn site.

Kerala is also exposed to similar risks as it has no clear policies on acquiring domain names and switching it. Several Government departments and agencies have acquired commercial domain names for their use. Even the Government's web portal is using a .com domain. The explanation offered by officials for booking such domains was that they were ``popular'' in India.

The appropriate thing for them was to acquire an Indian domain name and host the sites within the country. There is an exclusive Indian top-level domain for Government sites (.gov.in) which cannot be booked by others. Eventually, the Government sites would have to go in for Indian top-level domains. But if they drop existing domains without taking necessary precautions, what happened to the CDFD can happen to Kerala's Government departments also. Already, the Tourism Department, the State Planning Board, the Kerala Livestock Development Board and the Industries Department have exposed themselves to such risks.

The domains of these departments were registered by private agencies who got the contracts for designing the sites. They often registered it in their own names. At least two of them refused to part with the domains when the Government wanted to take the contract off them.

The Planning Board abandoned ownership of its domain all on a sudden. So, those who were searching for the Board's site found some notices and advertisements instead. The Industry Department recently changed its domain from keralaindustry.com to keralaindustry.org. As of today, the keralaindustry.com domain is open for booking by anybody. Fortunately for the department, more than three months have elapsed after the domain became free for booking. So, most search engines have stopped listing it as the official site of the Industry Department.

The Livestock Development Board has changed its Internet address from livestockkerala.org to livestockkerala.net after a private agency which registered the original domain declined to part with it. However, none owns the .org name now.

Even if none misuses these names now, frequent changes of Internet address can confuse visitors. Many used to visit keralatourism.com thinking that it was the official site even after the official site moved from that address. For private parties acquiring expired Government domains, it can be a windfall if the site was having good traffic. There is also a chance of such parties misleading customers.

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