What do you do if a web address you printed on a physical flyer contains a typo, and you send that flyer to more than 100,000 households? Well, if you’re the Swiss canton (“state”) of Basel-Stadt, you buy the domain that contains the typo, and create a redirect to the correct URL.
As Swiss news outlet SRF reports, the Basel tax administration printed fliers that were supposed to include a URL to file taxes online. However, the Swiss country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of “.ch” was omitted, leaving just the Basel-Stadt suffix of “.bs” — which just happens to be the ccTLD of the Bahamas.
A spokesperson for Basel-Stadt’s department of finance told SRF that it would cost the equivalent of around $100,000 to print and send out a batch of new flyers, so it was a no-brainer to fork out $1,000 to administer the new domain instead.
The new URL with redirect isn’t live yet, as it will apparently take a little time for the registration process to conclude.
iPhone and Android users will soon be able to send encrypted RCS messages to each other
Text messages sent between iPhones and Android devices will soon benefit from end-to-end encryption (E2EE), after the GSM Association (GSMA)...
Developer of LockBit ransomware gets extradited to the United States
Rostislav Panev, a 51-year-old dual Russian-Israeli national, who is accused of being a key developer for the notorious LockBit ransomware...
US lawmakers urge UK spy court to hold Apple ‘backdoor’ secret hearing in public
A group of bipartisan U.S. lawmakers are urging the head of the U.K.’s surveillance court to hold an open hearing...
Kerry Washington invests in wedding marketplace Cheersy
Kerry Washington is expanding her angel investment portfolio, serving as lead investor in the pre-seed round of the wedding marketplace...
