> This is because you're using a Web browser that tries appending ".com" > (and possibly prepending "www.") to a host name if it can't find it, on > the assumption that you might have typed something like "aol" instead of > "www.aol.com". It's your Web browser that's doing it, not their DNS > software. > > The "org.com" people are just taking advantage of a design flaw in your > Web browser. Your browser is guessing at what you meant to type when it > can't find any record of "www.dhs.org", and one of its incorrect guesses > happens to be "www.dhs.org.com".
Worse... Depending on your configuration, there is a feature in Windows 2000/XP (And possibly earlier, I'm not sure), that will cause Windows itself to do this. In the TCP/IP configuration section, there is a "Append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix" setting. If you have that, and your primary NT domain is xxx.example.com and you are trying to access www.offline.org then it will try www.offline.org then www.offline.org.xxx.example.com. www.offline.org.example.com. www.offline.org.com. Nice, huh? -- The nice thing about standards, there is enough for everyone to have their own.
