Introduced | 1997 |
---|---|
TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
Status | Active |
Registry | AS Domain Registry |
Sponsor | AS Domain Registry |
Intended use | Entities connected with ![]() |
Actual use | Used for a variety of things, mostly not connected with American Samoa |
Registration restrictions | Domains may not be used for pornographic or racist material; registry has right of refusal for all applications |
Structure | Registrations are directly at second level |
Documents | Registry policy |
Dispute policies | UDRP |
Website | AS Domain Registry |
.as is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for American Samoa. It is administered by AS Domain Registry.
Usage
There is no restriction on the nationality of registrants, and many .as names are registered to and used by people, companies and organizations with no connection to American Samoa (as example, people and organizations related to Asturias, a Spanish region). "AS" or "A/S" is a suffix indicating a joint stock company in some countries including Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Czech Republic, so this TLD may be of use by companies of this sort. Also, some autonomous systems or websites providing information about autonomous systems or BGP, such as bgp4.as, have registered domain names. It is, sometimes, used as a domain hack, since the suffix "-s" means plural in some languages like English and Spanish, thus "-as" would be the end of the plural of a word that ends with an "a". An example of that is the Brazilian website escol.as, meaning "schools".
Vulnerability
In April 2016, a security researcher uncovered a vulnerability in the AS Domain Registry which exposed plain-text passwords of .as domain owners, administrators, billing and technical contacts, and further allowed anyone to modify or delete .as domain records.[1]