How the domain name system works and rules around top- level domain names could now see a change.

A shake up of how the domain name system could see the introduction of the .xxx domain for pornographic websites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) will meet to decide whether 'custom domains' could be assigned to companies and individuals.

Some fear that the opening up of the domain name system could assist hackers and fraudsters into cloning websites.

Websites are currently being cloned, cloning (of websites) is the practice of copying a websites appearance and also some of the coding behind it and hosting it on a very similar domain name, thereby fooling the user to enter card details.

This could be more easily done if an individual could register hsbc.con, when the user intends to visit hsbc.com.

The .xxx domain name was proposed by a group of pornographic websites as a way of grouping off such websites, so that they are easy to find for some and easily blocked and so not accessed by under eighteens.

Currently only countries can register top level domains, they must take the official short code of their nation and put simply it goes after the dot, for example, the code for Germany (Deutschland) is DE, so the domain is .de.

The only exception to this rule is the United Kingdom, or more precisely Great Britain, our top-level domain should be .gb, but is .uk as it was registered very early on in the development of the world wide web.

Icann have not made any major changes in how the internet works for many years, and have recently only been interested in the development of new domain names such as .us, the domain name actually for the United States as .com is actually for world commerce.

Some argue that there needs to be more domain names, especially more that aren't attached to one particular country, as for example two companies operating in Great Britain of the same name can not have the same .co.uk address.

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