Trust in the domain?

We’re living in a post-truth society. 

An age of fake news, increased online scams and anti-right tech founders spouting hate speech or bowing to alt-right state leaders. 

Trust matters right now when it comes to services and the organisations running them;

• Trust you will not be scammed, that the service you’re interacting with is real, not fake 

• Trust you will be treated with respect, and not duped or forced into doing something you don’t want to do

• Trust that your data will be handled securely and fairly, and you will not  be targeted or at a disadvantage in future should the political and social landscape change

• Trust that the company will work hard to make sure you’re not at risk of harm, or if you are when using their service, they will look after you 

• Trust that, at the most basic level, the service whether paid for, or you are entitled to use will work

I’ve a longer talk I gave a few years ago called Trust Falls for the fantastic Knight Moves I’m going to update and write up.

But this morning’s break in trust came in the form of the electoral register and local authority

I received a letter to confirm household electoral register with a link to the domain householdresponse[.com] + /myarea

My first thought was, is this a scam? Honestly, as a super confident, literate internet user, even I was second guessing, should I use this?

I get URLs will change because they’re run by 3rd party providers, but some trust exists when being linked from a Gov/Local Gov website directly to themBut a domain in a letter, to a non [.]gov URL for a citizen service felt fake 

When trust in democracy is at an all time low, this feels like a really irresponsible design decision to host it on a .com domain that you could buy off any provider. Same would apply to passports, visas, health stuff etc. 

I understand the cost reasons for doing this (isn't everything more complicated than meets the eye) rather than try to make this work on 300+ LA website, but what is the real cost when it comes to trust here? To an important democratic process? 

I respect there’s a nuanced conversation doing the rounds at the moment about different branded websites for specific Government or health functions and time based campaigns but we’re at risk of creating an environment and permission where we spin up multiple products and services that recreate the melange of pre 2012 internet services.

Trust in a gov.uk domain feels like the last sort of fallback. 

When all else is in question, this is an indisputable marker of trust

What do you think? 

• How do we build trust when not on a trusted URL?

• Should we have these important citizen services on non gov domains?

• Do you trust these URLs? 

• Do you notice them? 

• Does it matter? 

• Does Government URLs make it untrustworthy (there’s research evidence for certain services being Government making it less trustworthy for groups)?