[tor-talk] new tld question

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 10:40:52AM -0400, Webmaster wrote:
> With the availability of new TLDs,  is there/would there be a
> concern if someone applied for the .onion tld?   Would this affect
> the current system?

In short, no. Tor clients treat .onion addresses specially, and don't
go to dns servers for them at all.

The only way it would matter is if your Tor client configuration is
screwed up and your browser isn't actually using Tor. In the current case
you'll ask your local dns server about the address, and it (you hope) will
return a "resolve failed" answer. If somebody registers the .onion tld,
then maybe it would send you somewhere else if your Tor is misconfigured.

With the Tor Browser Bundle, such misconfigurations are pretty uncommon
these days (assuming users actually use the bundle we provide).

See also
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6116

Oh, and I guess if whoever gets .onion puts content on it that Tor users
want to reach, we might want to reconsider. But come on, how likely is
that? :)

--Roger