Is google-mkto.com a legitimate part of Google?

[barismuto]

I came upon this page:

https://lp.google-mkto.com/gcp-research-credits.html

Apparently, it's a grant program for research projects, donating GCE credits.

However, I'd never seen the google-mkto.com domain before. I searched but could not decisively verify it's a legitimate Google domain.

I don't know what "mkto" stands for, and I'm paranoid it could be some random phishing attempt.

Can anyone confirm or disprove its status as part of Google?

Thanks

[Fady (Google Cloud Platform)]

Hello Barsimuto,

Thank you for posting this question. You can access the same link from our official Google Cloud Platform Education credits page at this link by clicking “Apply Now”. Hence, this is a legitimate site, and seems to be used by the “Google for Education Team”.

[barismuto]

Thank you!

[Alex Martelli]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 2:05 PM 'Fady (Google Cloud Platform)' via gce-discussion <gce-dis...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hello Barsimuto,

Thank you for posting this question. You can access the same link from our official Google Cloud Platform Education credits page at this link by clicking “Apply Now”. Hence, this is a legitimate site, and seems to be used by the “Google for Education Team”.

A helpful way to check who owns a given site (which may come in handy to you in the future if and when you again try to check a suspicious site for possible phishing &c) is to run at a Linux prompt the command `whois` (you may need to apt-get install whois, or the equivalent in your favorite operating system flavor).

`whois google-mkto.com | more

reads, in part...:

Admin Organization: Google Inc.
Admin State/Province: CA
Admin Country: US
Tech Organization: Google Inc.
Tech State/Province: CA
Tech Country: US
Name Server: ns4.google.com
Name Server: ns3.google.com
Name Server: ns2.google.com
Name Server: ns1.google.com

So you can see it's both administratively and technically handled by Google Inc. in California, US, and its name servers are all on the google.com domain -- useful bits of information.

If you'd rather not use Linux or install whois on your own machine, similar information is also available from sites such as whois.net -- though installing whois locally gives more complete info and doesn't try to sell you similar domain names such as google-mkto.net and the like (such sales of course are how whois.net monetizes the free access it gives you to useful information).

whois also exists for Windows, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/whois , but I have no experience using that specific version, so I can't vouch for it.

Alex

 

On Friday, June 1, 2018 at 9:03:02 AM UTC-4, barismuto wrote:

I came upon this page:

https://lp.google-mkto.com/gcp-research-credits.html

Apparently, it's a grant program for research projects, donating GCE credits.

However, I'd never seen the google-mkto.com domain before. I searched but could not decisively verify it's a legitimate Google domain.

I don't know what "mkto" stands for, and I'm paranoid it could be some random phishing attempt.

Can anyone confirm or disprove its status as part of Google?

Thanks

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[barismuto]

Thank you Alex!

I learned a lot from your python presentations, you're one of my heroes.

You're a great teacher, thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my puny question.

[Alex Martelli]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 2:31 PM barismuto <bari...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Alex!

I learned a lot from your python presentations, you're one of my heroes.

Always happy to be of help, thanks for letting me know!

 

You're a great teacher, thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my puny question.

You're too kind! And, no question is "puny" -- 99% of the time, there are likely to be instructive answers (as I hope my notes on `whois` were on this occasion).

Thanks,

Alex

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gce-discussion/a011dbf0-bfd9-4c74-84de-78131095d568%40googlegroups.com.

[barismuto]

Indeed, your instructive response was really helpful.

And that's what I mean when I say you're a great teacher.

Cheers!