In one of the first examples of a large company utilizing (and actually marketing) the .mobi extension, Bank of America launched bofa.mobi. The Bank is heavily promoting this with a retail merchandising campaign, including bofa.mobi window decals in their large branches in Manhattan.

I think this is a positive development for the .mobi extension, as the Bank could have simply used their standard domain name and detected the type of browser the visitor was using. They could have also gone to market with the domain name and only used it for protective purposes, so consumers or other companies couldn’t use the name. A heavy endorsement of this website is a positive sign for the staying power of .mobi.

I have one security concern with this, and I hope the Bank is mindful of it. What if someone set up a malicious website on a similar domain name that only had two lines asking for an account number and password? Since we are talking about mobile devices with small screens, unknowing consumers could accidentally submit their banking information, unaware that this wasn’t the Bank’s website. It’s one thing if someone did this with typos of the full Bank of America name and/or used the Bank’s logos, as that would be a federal offense. My concern is if they weren’t this sophisticated.

Bank of America needs to do a very good job of training their customers about what to look for on the bofa.mobi site so they know if they accidentally navigate to another website in error. They should also buy as many .mobi typos similar to their bofa.mobi domain name, so nobody has the opportunity to set up a malicious website.

I don’t have much of a stake in the .mobi extension with only two .mobi names in my portfolio, but I believe this is a good endorsement from a major corporation.