From TedCruz.ca to TaylorSwift.porn: How the golden age of domain-trolling was born

From TedCruz.ca to TaylorSwift.porn: How the golden age of domain-trolling was born

The 2016 race has scarcely begun, and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz already has an image problem.

Typing tedcruz.com into your URL bar returns a black page that says “SUPPORT PRESIDENT OBAMA” in unequivocal all-caps. Tedcruzforamerica.com redirects to Healthcare.gov. TedCruz.ca confirms that the U.S. senator from Texax was, indeed, born Canadian. Tedcruz2016.com is pretty harmless — a carousel of scenic photos, with the promise that a real site is “coming soon” — but its owner has nothing to do with the Cruz campaign, and who knows what he or she is actually up to.

Never fear, Cruz fans: Your champion did eventually find an open domain name, in the cold and less-trafficked waters of the .org domain.

But the fact that his trolls conquered so much ground speaks to how popular this type of Internet tomfoolery has recently become. And in two short months, it’s going to get even worse: That’s when three of the most controversial new top-level domains — .porn, .adult and .sucks — are released to a merciless public. Taylor Swift already snapped up Web addresses on those domains to make sure no one uses them against her.

Read the full article at The Washington Post.