The Perception of Top Level Domains and Abuse Considerations for Domain Buyers
News — November 13, 2018
As of November 2018, Bulc Club’s Members have rated over 60,000+ sender domains (and 85,000+ email addresses) for the type of email they deliver. These ratings are the intelligence behind Bulc Club‘s free mail filtering and forwarding service, giving Members the knowledge over which businesses are selling/compromising their privacy.
Note: As a courtesy, Bulc Club allows the public to search for Member Ratings for addresses and domains. Give it a try: https://www.bulc.club/check/
An analysis of this data could also provide some unique insight into domain registration, and the perception of a top-level domain (the last segment of a domain name, such as “.com” or “.gov“) and its potential connection to abusive email.
As a reminder, Bulc Club’s Member Ratings are presented in a scale of 0% (no evidence of abuse) to 100% (all email received by this domain is unsolicited/spam). Mail is forwarded to Members if the rating for BOTH the address and domain are at or beneath the 50% threshold.
A short list of Average Ratings (by TLD) is below:
| TLD | Average Rating |
|---|---|
| .gov | 15.85% |
| .live | 28.57% |
| 33.33% | |
| .me | 40.96% |
| .edu | 42.86% |
| .services | 50.01% |
| .org | 60.25% |
| .com | 72.29% |
| .design | 75.00% |
| .accountant | 75.80% |
| .info | 78.13% |
| .download | 78.46% |
| .net | 79.33% |
| .science | 81.35% |
| .faith | 83.03% |
| .biz | 84.91% |
| .webcam | 88.16% |
| .bid | 89.80% |
| .space | 91.45% |
| .party | 92.17% |
| .press | 92.19% |
| .stream | 92.88% |
| .club | 95.01% |
| .us | 95.22% |
| .website | 95.87% |
| .online | 96.07% |
| .review | 96.78% |
| .rocks | 98.57% |
| .help | 99.75% |
Even the .club TLD (which is used by this service, itself) has a whopping 95.01% rating, by contrast to the 72.29% rating members attached to .com—the TLD that still comprises over 46% of currently registered domains worldwide*. One might attribute the rate of abuse to the average cost of registering less common TLDs. According to TLD LIST, a rough comparison of domain registration costs places .club registrations at $1.13/yr and .com at $12.17/yr.
As a side note, this information is not being presented to dissuade businesses or individuals from registering domains that feature any of these TLD suffixes. Nor is Bulc Club making any claims that businesses who operate under a principle domain with one of these suffixes is in any way connected to abusive email or any practices that might compromise recipient privacy. It is provided, rather, as a mere insight, from the perspective of actual email servers forwarding mail to Bulc Club Members and how these Members rate them.
This chart is only a sample of the roughly 212 TLDs present in Bulc Club Member Ratings. Some TLDs that have a FULL 100% rating (meaning ALL email ever received by Bulc Club Members by domains with this suffix was deemed abusive) can be found in the list below. Again, this sample data is provided for your information only.
| TLD | Average Rating |
|---|---|
| .delivery | 100% |
| .express | 100% |
| .guru | 100% |
| .life | 100% |
| .link | 100% |
| .menu | 100% |
| .shop | 100% |
| .store | 100% |
| .today | 100% |
| .trade | 100% |
| .vip | 100% |
Conversely, the TLDs that have a 0% rating (meaning ALL email ever received by Bulc Club Members by domains with this suffix was deemed non-abusive) can be found in the list below. You might consider this somewhat counter-intuitive to find a TLD such as .travel to be among the least flagged abusive senders, but also consider that these are likely newsletter subscriptions in which Bulc Club Members actively enrolled and would therefore not be considered abuse by them. Equally, these are less common domain suffixes and Bulc Club Members likely have received substantially less email through them. As previous, this sample data is provided for your information only.
| TLD | Average Rating |
|---|---|
| .art | 0% |
| .beer | 0% |
| .blog | 0% |
| .digital | 0% |
| .engineer | 0% |
| .events | 0% |
| .foundation | 0% |
| .graphics | 0% |
| .house | 0% |
| .ie | 0% |
| .ltd | 0% |
| .media | 0% |
| .network | 0% |
| .social | 0% |
| .solutions | 0% |
| .studio | 0% |
| .support | 0% |
| .technology | 0% |
| .training | 0% |
| .travel | 0% |
| .ventures | 0% |
| .world | 0% |
Bulc Club Data
Public Data
Bulc Club is unique in that it relies on Member Ratings of email addresses and domains in order to safely forward (or prohibit the forwarding) of emails to Members. While this process is entirely automated, ratings data is publicly accessible from Bulc Club’s site (www.bulc.club) by individually searching for email addresses and domains to obtain Member Ratings. Industry/trade journals interested in a complete list of TLD and Member Ratings may contact Bulc Club via DM on Twitter (@BULCCLUB).
Private Data
Aside from Member Ratings, No Member data is accessible to anyone but the Member. In fact, as Bulc Club’s process is automated, compiled, and encrypted, Bulc Club administrators and technicians only have access to basic account information for the purpose of providing support. More information about Bulc Club privacy and security may be found at the following links:
- Bulc Club: Privacy Policy
- Bulc Club FAQs: If all messages re filtered through Bulc Club, shouldn’t I be worried about privacy?
- Press Release: Bulc Club Eliminates Spam with Social Networking
Using This Data
Bulc Club is entirely free. Members receive unlimited free email forwarders and unlimited free email filtering. As this filtering data is aggregated from Member feedback, ratings for email addresses and domains continue to grow and be refined for stronger accuracy. Due to this unique process, Bulc Club has become the fastest growing and most robust spam prevention service in the world.
Learn more about Member Ratings: bulc.club/faqs/#rating
Join Bulc Club: bulc.club/join
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* Most popular top-level domains worldwide as of May 2018, courtesy of statista.com: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265677/number-of-internet-top-level-domains-worldwide/