Tots Get Internet Identity At Birth
Posted August 22, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, New York-born baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won’t likely use for years to come: her very own Internet domain name. It seems a small but growing number of parents are getting web addresses for their young kids, long before they even know their ABCs.
It’s not known exactly how many, but the practice is no longer limited to parents who are web savvy. They worry that the name of choice might not be available by the time their babies become teens or adults. Just like someone claimed the “.com” for Britney Spears’ 11-month-old son before she could.
Hundreds of companies sell domain names with suffixes like “.com,” “.org” and “.info,” which individuals can then link to personal websites and e-mail accounts. Parents simply visit one of those companies’ websites, search for the name they want and, if no one else has claimed it yet, buy it on the spot with a credit card.
There’s no guarantee, though, that domain names will have as central a role in online identity. After all, with search engines getting smarter, Internet users can simply type the name of a person into Google.
Besides providing an easy-to-remember Web address, the domain name makes possible e-mail addresses without awkward numbers like “JohnSmith24”, because 23 other John Smiths had beaten your child to it.
Parents not ready to commit or don’t know how to go about buying a domain are at least trying their luck with Hotmail or Gmail. The downside to all this is that an easy-to-remember domain also makes it easier for strangers to find a child.
