Category: News

Renewal rates for local domains stand at over 80%

Posted on by Comunicació

The GeoTLD Group met in the Breton city of Quimper on 2 and 3 June, in a meeting organised by .bzh, the domain representing the Breton community on the internet.

Headed by the Fundació .cat, and with the .barcelona domain as one of its members, the goal of the group is to promote local identities on the internet using geographical domains.

During the meeting, the GeoTLD Group presented a comparative study, highlighting the high renewal rate among a very large number of geographical domains, standing at between 80% and 90%. In some cases, renewals even topped 90%. Of all the geoTLD domains, .tokyo enjoys the highest number of registrations, with 302,574 to be precise. Besides .tokyo, the only domain with more than 100,000 registrations is .cat, the domain representing the Catalan-speaking community. Most geoTLDs have between 5,000 and 25,000 registrations, as is the case with the .barcelona domain. If we look at the number of domains per inhabitant, .barcelona comes out above domains such as .madrid, .paris, .sydney and others. Specifically, there are 3.23 .barcelona domains registered per 1,000 inhabitants.

The geoTLD meeting also covered various other topics such as the campaign for the emoji with the Breton flag, marketing practices geared towards specific solutions for the communities these organisations serve, and the evolution of the European regulatory framework for the internet.

Finally, Stockholm City Council presented its experience in transferring all the services in the city to its own domain, start.stockholm.

The .barcelona domain turns six with 5,000 active domains

Posted on by Comunicació

Since opening up its public register in March 2016, the .barcelona domain has generated a volume of active domains comparable to other large cities. With 5,228 domains in all, the number of domains per inhabitant puts .barcelona on a par with other city domains such as .paris, .london and .tokyo.

Besides the overall figures, the .barcelona domain stands out from the rest of geoTLDs for its permeability in Barcelona’s society. The domain reflects the city’s social and commercial make-up and is used across multiple sectors.

Browsing the different types of .barcelona domains gives us a first-hand look at the city’s most typical and iconic sectors. Staring with cultural domains such as those used by the MACBA or Park Güell, and moving onto gastronomic ones such as the one for La Boqueria, in just a few clicks we can get a feel for the city.

We can also find .barcelona domains relating to sports, such as the ones for the firefighters’ run or La Mercè, which represent the city so well. There are domains for shopping too, such as the recently launched BCNMarket, the city’s official online shop.

The Catalan capital has an exceptional showcase on the internet thanks to the .barcelona domain, which brings together the diversity of activities and services offered by the city.

The domain turned six on 21 March, celebrating the opening of the domain register to all projects wishing to sign up to it. Even so, the domain officially started life in July 2015, when it started being used for municipal projects. A year later came the formal contact with the ICANN, the main regulating body for this sector.

A stronger position for .barcelona as a city domain in 2021

Posted on by Comunicació

Last year meant a year of consolidation for the .barcelona domain, with the figure of 4,175 renewals similar to previous years. In contrast, the number of new domain registrations reached 786. The overall number of .barcelona domains stands at 5,183, with a renewal rate of 83.06%.

Various new registrations stand out in 2021. For instance, the virtual shop window for neighbourhood commerce bcnmarket.barcelona, sportshub.barcelona and alimentaciosostenible.barcelona.  These three sites provide support for commerce, sustainable food and sport.

Having a .barcelona domain helps get projects off the ground which are beneficial to the city. The income from .barcelona is also reinvested to create projects such as elmeucomerç.barcelona, which has the goal of helping neighbourhood shops and businesses go digital. The establishments that signed up to the programme got a new .barcelona domain through a simple free process. This is a way for shops and businesses to link their digital identity with the city.

A domain open to all

Barcelona became the latest city to set up its own domain in March 2016, when it launched .barcelona. All organisations, companies, individuals and administrations with ties to the city of Barcelona and its catchment area, or who engage in activity there, can register using the city’s domain.

The .barcelona domain is part of the international association geoTLD, which provides it with greater representation within the sector. The community is made up of over a million active top-level geographical domains, such as those using .berlin, .paris, .london and .tokyo. The geoTLD Group works in the interest of geographical domains to promote local identities and disseminate their values.

The idea of a link with a large city such as Barcelona is a key part of the goals of the .barcelona domain, as is backing for city projects and getting on the Catalan capital’s digital map. Users value the fact they can be identified with Barcelona, whether this is for others to find them of because they are identified with the city’s attributes.

Main topics for the GeoTLD meeting

Posted on by Comunicació

Frankfurt hosted a meeting for the members of the GeoTLD group on 9 September, adopting a hybrid virtual and on-site format due to the pandemic.

The meeting was used to present and discuss the latest on the next round of GeoTDL requests, as well as to exchange opinions on the relationship and cooperation between registers and different departments of the ICANN. The meeting concluded with a session on the abuse of DNS (Domain Name Systems) and cybersecurity.

These meetings are fundamental for members of the GeoTLD group to be able to exchange impressions in an enriching way, particularly on their goals and on the point where each of them is at.

A geoTLD is a top-level domain which represents communities of a cultural, linguistic or social nature with a strong and specific geographical presence. Members include the domain .scot, .cat, .eus and .gal, as well as city domains such as .sydney, .stockholm and .barcelona.

The .barcelona domain joins the international geoTLD group

Posted on by Comunicació

Thanks to its participation in this association, the .barcelona domain is better represented in the sector and will be able to exchange experiences and generate transnational projects with other geographical domains.

By becoming one of the 37 members of the geoTLD group in the spring this year, the .barcelona domain forms part of a community of a million active top-level geographical domains which promote the digital identity of regions, languages, cultures and nearly 70 member cities on the internet. The most significant member cities are .berlin, .paris, .london, .tokyo and .madrid, which also joined recently.

This international non-governmental and non-profit association works in the interests of geographical domains as a way of promoting local identities, positively disseminating and sharing their values. It includes governments, organisations, businesses and associations from all around the globe. Chaired by Catalonia’s Nacho Amadoz, head of the Fundació.cat, the geoTLP group is also a hub for the exchange of knowledge, communication and marketing materials and research projects.

This working group is also present in the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an organisation working to coordinate domains at a global level.

Visit the specific .barcelona domain page on the geoTLD website.

ICANN 71 opts to open up to everybody

Posted on by Ana Tapia

The move by the international body to open up to the world makes it possible to follow the ICANN 71 Virtual Policy Forum online from 14 to 17 June. The forum will be looking at progress with policies to combat DNS abuse, mechanisms for protecting intellectual property and the calendar for the next round of applications for new top-level domains (TLD). Other topics under discussion are the new governmental laws on web domains and the safety and treatment of data, domain registration data and the impact on people and companies.

The forum also includes a meeting by the geographical top-level domain (GEOTLD) group on Tuesday 15 June. The session will assess the impact of .barcelona policies and the rest of the geographical domains. As a member of this group, Punt Barcelona will be taking part along with representatives from other world cities and extending a welcome to the domain .madrid. The sessions in the forum can be followed live and registration is free.

ICANN is a non-profit corporation set up in 1998 to work for and guarantee global stability for the internet, helping to coordinate domains on a world level.

New programme to digitalise the social and solidarity economy

Posted on by Comunicació

The MatchImpulsa programme has been conceived to promote the digitalisation of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) and the collaborative economy. The goal of the first programme by the Open Chair in Digital Economy, offered in collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), is for organisations and businesses in this sphere to fully enter the digital economy at a time of change which has accelerated since the start of the pandemic.

The new programme follows the lines set out in the city’s 2030 SSE strategy, which identifies the challenge of digitalisation and the creation of digital platforms as one of its main goals. Along with these goals the idea is to include the feminist perspective, redress the increase in gender inequalities in digitalisation processes and speed up the adoption of equality measures in digital environments in companies.

The new Open Chair involves a cost of 701,500 euros between now and the end of the year, with the City Council to contribute 55% to fund SSE and collaborative economy projects, provide advice and mentoring, strengthen ties in specific sectors and foster collaboration between projects.

The programme is structured into three strategy areas:

  • Digitalisation of organisations and businesses, the creation and strengthening of digital platforms: three programmes to providing varying degrees of support for companies and organisations, to help develop their digital strategy, adapt their organisational and teleworking strategy and start working with digital platforms or create their own.
  • Boost for key SSE ecosystems in Barcelona: in particular, agro-ecology (in a year when Barcelona is the world sustainable food capital) and digital feminism, which aims to build an ecosystem of practices with feminist values in Barcelona’s digital economy and create a resource for empowering women and promoting alternative masculinities.
  • Groups of experts in technology, equality and university-business ties to offer resources for moving forward with digitalisation under the guidance of those who know most about it.

MatchImpulsa will run from 25 May to 31 December. Those wishing to participate should sign up on the website matchimpulsa.barcelona.

ICANN70 first annual meeting

Posted on by Comunicació

The ICANN Community Virtual Forum was the first of the three annual meetings organised by the body which regulates the two basic technical infrastructures for the internet: the domains and IP addresses which enable users to find content housed on the internet.

This was the fourth of these meetings to adopt a virtual format, given the impossibility of congregating a large number of representatives from governments, associations and industry.

This first meeting of the year is used for planning the tasks of the various workgroups during the rest of the year. This year will see the groups centre on the development of mechanisms which allow domain owners to be contacted without their privacy being compromised, and on the improvement of efficiency in remote work carried out by the ICANN. The group which was analysing the impact of new internet domains has submitted its report and consideration is now being given on how to open up to new domains.

The meeting covered two subjects in depth which directly affect internet users, particularly in Europe: internet crime using domain names and the new European legal framework on the right to the internet.

Crimes with domain names

Recent years have seen surge in internet crime, particularly cases where domain names are used to deceive users by displaying pages which appear to be official, or where email addresses are used to send fraudulent messages.

Internet registers are a key element in identifying these crimes, and we are working on technical initiatives and regulations which will enable us to offer our users greater security.

New European legal framework

The European Commission has put together a series of new regulations which represent a greater degree of protection for European consumers and internet users. The regulations will establish stricter obligations for all companies operating on the internet, particularly large platforms such as Google and Facebook.

While the regulations are not due to be approved until early in 2023, we are studying them and giving our input to EU representatives to improve the aspects relating to domain name users.

GeoTLD general assembly

The GeoTLD group is an association which represents the interests of geographical, cultural and linguistic domains, of which .barcelona is a member. Its representatives work to give the communities they represent a more prominent role in the internet.

The main goal of the assembly was precisely this new European legal framework for the internet. Our goal as the representative for the .barcelona community with the internet’s governing bodies is to offer the citizens and internet users we represent the chance to express themselves and voice their concerns.

This annual assembly was also used to present the new design of the website geotld.group, which features a collaborative section for news items by all its members. Another highlight was the presentation of a new international promotional video to explain what geographical domains are and the main advantages to them.

Cyberattacks up during the pandemic

Posted on by Comunicació

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a digital transformation in all spheres: schools found themselves having to conduct classes and all interaction with pupils via internet, while a large number of companies introduced teleworking between their teams and continue to work remotely or combine this with on-site activity at their offices.

But it doesn’t stop there. A study confirms that the creation of new domains in Europe is up by 20% because of the pandemic, an increase most likely stemming from the fact that most businesses have had to undergo a transformation and get online to be able to keep offering customers their products and services.

Yet the digital transformation has its downside too, with cyberattacks mushrooming in 2020 and half of them attributable to the increase in teleworking caused by the pandemic: “Over half of organisations weren’t ready for the digitalisation needed to implement teleworking”, affirms a study by ACCIÓ and the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia.

The same study states that “on a global scale estimates put the rate of cyberattacks in 2021 at one every eleven seconds. This figure has risen considerably in recent years: in 2016 the average was 40 seconds”.

One of the most common forms of IT attack is ransomware, with malicious software or a virus encrypting the whole content of a computer and demanding a ransom to decrypt it. Another is phishing, involving the fraudulent supplanting of identity and aimed at businesses and individuals alike: recipients get an email or mobile phone message requesting data or passwords. One of the most common scenarios is where a bank is imitated, with the recipient getting a message asking them to confirm a user ID and password which are then used to access the account.

How to spot internet fraud?

A quick check of the domain the message is trying to direct us to is one way to detect this. With both ransomware and phishing, it’s likely they’re trying to supplant the identity of recognised organisations to either get us to download a virus or to get access to our user data. But one important datum they can’t supplant is the domain of the real organisation.

Carrying on with the bank as an example, imagine you’re contacted by your bank, “Bank Segur”, and you know their website is bancsegur.barcelona. If you get a message from the bank asking you to access a page with the domain bancsegur.xxxxx.barcelona, here’s your clue that this is a fraud. Why? Because in this case the domain is xxxxx.barcelona, and bancsegur.xxxxx.barcelona is a subdomain. In other words, we should always look at what comes just before .barcelona (or .cat, .com, .es etc.).

If you’re still unsure, the best thing to do is not to reply to the message and to contact the organisation another way, via their customer service phone line, social media or the email address on the website you usually use.

More women in tech sectors, less of a digital gender divide

Posted on by Comunicació

A new government measure is under way to update the municipal strategy to combat the digital gender divide and promote equality in ICT. The fifty actions set out by the measure are designed to increase women’s presence in the tech market, drive digital training and promote science vocations among girls.

With a three-year roadmap and a budget of two million euros, the new government measure on gender equality in tech environments provides a new impetus for the promotion of women in the digital realm, strengthening the feminist perspective in the construction of an increasingly tech-driven society.

Achieving equality in the technological sphere is fundamental for building a fairer society which guarantees the same opportunities form girls and women when it comes to science and technology careers. This goal also forms part of the feminist struggle, with this year’s 8 March campaign adopting a collective and combative wave as its icon.

Women in the ICT sector

Even though Barcelona is a pioneering city at the forefront of the tech sphere, more action is needed to consolidate parity and a more equal city model in creation, design and the production of technology. Women currently occupy just 26% of jobs in the ICT sector and only 8.6% of technical posts.

Women’s reduced presence in the digital labour market heightens discrimination and their invisibility in the science and tech sphere, hampering their access further.

Four strategy areas to combat the digital divide

The new government measure is based around four main goals and 51 specific actions:

  1. Facilitate women’s access to ICT jobs: this includes the creation of digital training programmes and jobs, such as the BCNFemTech skills-acquisition plan, designed to get fifty women in vulnerable situations into professional positions in programming and web development.
  2. Support women in the ICT sector: visibility and recognition of women’s contribution to the development of tech industries is needed, along with the promotion of their involvement in public policies in this area. The measure therefore includes the creation of a BCNFemTech women’s network and backing for tech projects by women entrepreneurs.
  3. More women in public procurement: gender clauses are planned for public contracts with providers from the tech sector, along with the creation of an internal women’s technology team to drive digital training among women municipal workers.
  4. Science and tech girls: the promotion of science and tech careers among young girls is essential for ensuring equality in the digital society of the future. To this end, the roadmap includes a STEAM initiative for girls in primary school with the collaboration of the Mobile World Congress and agreements with universities to increase women’s presence in technological study areas.