Yesterday the .tel domain began taking its first round of registrations. The .tel domain is operated by Telnic. It is not your typical top level domain but instead uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to store all of your contact information (see Network World for a review of services offered through Telnic).
Telnic mentions that they have resolved security issues for .tel sites. I'd like to know more before trusting this service.
What is significant about .tel is the usage of the DNS for data beyond simple URLs and IP addresses. The DNS is the World's largest distributed database. It can have a lot more uses beyond looking up web sites. These uses are a key reason to move as rapidly as possible to deploy DNSSEC (see short video on DNSSEC), because data so stored should be stored securely. DNSSEC is the only mechanism ready-to-go that provides internet-wide authentication required for these uses.
I'll write about other potential lifestyle changing applications that are enabled by DNSSEC in my next post.
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