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Accept no substitutes: The only good MBTA site is mbta.com
By adamg on Thu, 06/02/2016 - 4:35pm
Seems somebody other than our favorite Massachusetts transit authority owns the domain mbta.org and going to that site will make your computer lock up and your hair catch on fire, so don't go there. If you need to learn how to get from Forest Hills to Wonderland, only go to mbta.com.
The official site of the #MBTA is https://t.co/VFYjwKfjQS. The website mbta. org does not belong to the MBTA.
— MBTA (@MBTA) June 2, 2016
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Comments
going to that site will make
As opposed to the real MBTA, where you run the risk of having your train catch on fire.
technically I think it should
technically I think it should be mbta.gov because it's a government organization. Or mbta.mass.gov.
I remember when the mbta.com domain launched way back in the day thinking just how wrong it was.
Its not uncommon
It's not uncommon for transit agencies to use a top level domain. Its easier to remember for most people. The minute you get above the top level and start using sub domains (i.e. sub.domain.com) or use the .gov suffix, people won't remember the URL.
Some other transit agencies that use top level domains without .gov suffixes:
itsmarta.com (Metropolitian Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority)
wmata.com (Washington DC Metro)
sfmuni.org/sfmta.com (San Francisco MUNI)
pvta.org (Pioneer Valley Transit Authority - Hampshire/Hamden county)
transitchicago.com (Chicago Subway)
soundtransit.org (Sound Transit - Seattle, WA)
capecodrta.org (Cape Code Regional Transit Authority)
lrta.com (Lowell Regional Transit Authority)
therta.com (Worcester Regional Transit Authority)
Even still agencies will register multiple domains and will just auto-forward everything to site. Like the Post office responds to www.usps.gov redirects www.usps.com. Seems like the MBTA didn't register mbta.org in time to redirect it mbta.com
(edit: fixed pvta info, clarified .gov, condensed)
(comment deleted)
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Unlikely
Since .gov was created in 1985, no website predates its creation.
PVTA is Hampshire - Hamden county
Not busting your chops just happened to work for them in the past...
:)
thanks.. fixed!
n/t
.org and .net have been dead
.org and .net have been dead since the late 1990's. Everyone prefers .com. It is nice to use .gov because it's reputable, but non-federal registrants have to include the state in the domain, and "mambta.gov" wouldn't be pretty.
The MBTA could do something cute like mb.ta (.ta is for Tara, which I just looked up and the place doesn't even have a wikipedia page WTF made ICANN deem it worthy of having a TLD), but "mbta.com" is good enough.
The USPS has been using USPS.com forever. For a long time they didn't even have DNS A records for USPS.GOV. Whoever was in charge of their infrastructure had some really weird ideas, which was a bloody shame but not a surprise considering how neglected their web presence still is.
Must include state in domain?
They will make exceptions to the "state in domain" requirement if asked. Example: boston.gov
The idea is to not have the domain be ambiguous. So subway.gov wouldn't work as there are many subways but mbta.gov should be allowed assuming there isn't another major transportation system in the US which is also called MBTA.
I normally go to mbta.gov without thinking and get annoyed when it won't resolve. My next thought would be mbta.org since the T certainly isn't about making money and is more an organization then a company. MBTA.com is something I'd assume would be the scammer site if I didn't know better.
You're different
But that's you. you're out of the norm. Most people would just go to .com .
Try working for companies or having an email address that ends in something else besides .com ? Most people automatically assume .com . I can't tell you how many work or personal emails I've missed because people used .com instead of the proper suffix (work and personal emails are .net addresses)
Happens more often than you think.
Brave new world of TLD
Now that you can have .horse as a TLD there's no real conventions. Still, I trust dot gov sites to be authentic. It would cost the MBTA $125 and a system admin a few emails to register MBTA.gov and then have it redirect to mbta.com just like the post office and others.
Remember when Whitehouse.com was a porn site? (And that isn't a Monica reference.)
In my experience, they do not
In my experience, they do not make exceptions. For a few years .GOV domains didn't require the state, but then there was a fiasco between two counties in different states that have the same name. To resolve it they enacted a policy requiring the state name or state abbreviation be part of the domain name. Existing domains were grandfathered.
If you know someone who asked the GSA for an exception and got one, then I would love to hear about it because I work with a few municipalities that would love to get one too.
Not really
Gee I don't know. My current employers email is domain.NET so is one of my email addresses (from an ISP I used to work for)
I think you mis-wrote. I think you mean that assigning .org to an non-profit organization and .net for 'networks' went away a long time ago. Right. The restriction for this was removed in the mid 90s.
As far as people prefer .com , that's right. But .net domains are still be registered and used. but to say as a blanket statement that they are 'dead' is incorrect.
.org is dead? I'll be sure to
.org is dead? I'll be sure to inform my organization's webmaster of this. Oh, wait, that's me. I like our .org. The .com of our domain is even available, but we don't need it.
Your webmaster might want to
Your webmaster might want to register that .com and DNAME it before a cybersquatter registers it. The main problem with a cybersquatter nowadays is if point the domain to a mailserver then they can receive emails intended for you. It's not so bad if someone mistypes your email address and it bounces. It's really bad if that email goes into a black hole.
There was never a restriction
There was never a restriction on who can register org and net domain names
Best is to register all of
Best is to register all of them and have them redirect
USPS
Even usps.gov redirects to usps.com. *sigh*
System
I'm going to guess that it was done this way because of the back end systems. Many web servers, particular Windows do not like some of these non-standard suffixes. Even though .gov is a top level suffix, it's rarely used. So many web servers barf because they don't know how to handle .gov suffixes. Its silly but I've run into this before with some of these odd suffix (i.e. bos.tn or mobile.me). It just means the web server isn't conforming to an RFC standard (and that's not surprising for Microsoft servers to do so)
Marketing
It was simply a marketing decision they made back in 2000.
Huh? The internet started
Huh? The internet started generations ago with seven TLDs: com, net, org, edu, gov, mil, and arpa. There is no version of IIS that will choke on .gov - it's been there forever. It's possible someone published a webpage with an restrictive regex pattern to valid your email (which is reasonable, an email address with more than three letters is still more likely a typo then a real address), but either way, the Microsoft middleware is probably not the culprit.
Govs can use COM
Consider the Post office is USPS.COM - not gov.
Let's bring back http://www
Let's bring back http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us ! mta.info is far too hard to remember.
mbta.org
From reports and 'testing' with a non-writable Windows 7 VM.. looks like a randsomware website.
Definitely don't go there. You can kiss your files good bye..
I went there on my Linux computer
Nothing exciting happened.
Maybe because nothing
Maybe because nothing exciting ever happens on a Linux computer. Borrring.
Does Logan Airport dot com still link
to a porn site? This is apparently the reason that Massport had to use flylogan dot com instead.
Why don't you try it and let
Why don't you try it and let us know? Hope you have a box of tissues handy.
There is no reliable pattern
There is no reliable pattern for these. The New York and Montreal transit systems are both at .info domains (mta.info and stm.info, respectively).
Sometimes someone other than the people you or I think of first registers the .com website first, and has a legitimate claim to it--there are a lot of companies and organizations with overlapping two- and three-letter acronyms. It makes sense that New York City is at nyc.gov is easy, but there are at least two cities that might want portland.gov.
Warning us about the ransomware site is the best the MBTA can do in the short term, and good for them for doing so.
The MBTA has apparently never
The MBTA has apparently never registered a trademark for "MBTA". They should do that. Then they can try to stake a claim to mbta.org. With a sternly worded letter on legal letterhead the current owner would be wise to give it up.
I don't think they could
Now, I'm no fancy intellectual property lawyer, but I don't think you can trademark initials. Additionally, if anyone is using those 4 letters in that order, they could gum things up.