Millions of websites could be impacted by UK deal on Chagos Islands
The UK government's decision to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius surprisingly threatens the extinction of millions of website addresses ending in ".io", and no one is quite sure what will happen next
The British Indian Ocean Territory or Chagos Islands CPA Media Pte Ltd / Alamy
The UK?s decision to return control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius will spark a raft of political, military and social changes. But one overlooked aspect is the impending deletion of millions of website addresses ending in ?.io?.
Most websites have a domain name ? such as newscientist.com ? and the last part is called the top-level domain (TLD). Along with .com, you are probably familiar with .org and .net, but there are over 1500 possible TLDs, of which around 300 are two-letter location-specific TLDs that?