Question

I’ve noticed that the domain

contoso.com

is often used in documentation when a sample is needed. I always figured this was a dummy domain, used like the telephone prefix “555” to route spam into some kind of telecommunicative void (although contoso.com appears to be a real site).

Is there a domain I can safely use when I have to, say, test a registration form 20 times with a unique email address and I don’t care what happens to the message, yet I don’t want it going to a real person?

Answer 1

You can use example.com. According to the Wikipedia article:

example.com, example.net, and example.org are second-level domain names reserved by the Internet Engineering Task Force through RFC 2606, Section 3,1 for use in documentation and examples. They are not available for registration.

By implementing the reservation, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) made available domains to use in manuals and sample software configurations. Thus, documentation writers can be sure to select a domain name without creating naming conflicts if end-users try to use the sample configurations or examples verbatim.

When an address such as "[e-mail]" is used to demonstrate the sign-up process on a website, it indicates to the user they should fill in an actual e-mail address at which they receive mail. "example.com" is used in a generic and vendor-neutral manner.

These domain names resolve to a server managed by ICANN.