Online Research

If I were looking for information and had to put my trust in a website’s authenticity, based on domain extensions only, I would primarily trust sites with the extensions- . edu, org, . mil, . gov and . tv. The reasons are simple. Although dot com as an extension has been the oldest and most popular extension ever since the start of the Internet, these days just about every website is getting this extension, which does put a question mark on its authenticity.

However, even then, I would trust it because many good and proven sites have the dot com extension and hence, the information we get from them is dependable and trustworthy. Extensions such as . edu, . org, . mil, . gov and. tv, on the other hand, are all extensions associated with universities, organizations, government and the entertainment industry, which does account for the reliability of information that one obtains from them. Other extensions like, . name, . net, . pro, .

biz are newer extensions and hence, one cannot be very sure about the information one receives from them, especially, since there are hardly any registration restrictions on them. Out of these, I would probably trust . biz, . net in circumstances where I am absolutely unable to get the information that I am looking for from another source. I would also, trust these extensions when I am absolutely sure about the authenticity of the website. However, I would be leery of websites with the extensions .

name and . pro, since they are relatively newer and one is not very sure about the objectivity and reliability of their content. So though it might be difficult to assess the validity of information received from a website, we can base our judgment on domain extensions along with, other criteria such as the reputation of the website itself. Works Cited Rodriguez III ,Gene “Understanding Domain Name Extensions. ” Life123 http://www. life123. com/technology/internet/domain-name/domain-name-extensions. shtml

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