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In this question, the asker wanted to obfuscate their domain name. They did so by using a domain owned by a public well-known company. (I edited the question to use example.com instead.) I've also seen several other questions where the asker has used e.g. domain.com, mydomain.com and similar names, rather than the RFC-blessed example.com.

There's been a feature request earlier about creating a mark-up for obfuscation of domain names. However, until/unless it's been implemented it might be helpful to have a section in "How to ask questions" that deals with "how to obfuscate domain names properly".

Here's a suggestion for text to be used:

Please don't obfuscate your actual domain name unless absolutely necessary. In any question relating to DNS and/or email issues, the people trying to help you may need to be able to look at your DNS records in order to help you. If, despite this, you feel it necessary to use a fake domain name, please use the standard name example.com. Never use any domain name that is not related to your question.

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    Great idea +1 but ultimately more words that won't be read by anyone who needs to read them.
    – user9517
    Jan 5, 2014 at 15:05
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    I take your point, Iain, but I still find it helpful to have a selection of "official" clue-bats to beat people with, instead of having to fashion my own each time.
    – MadHatter
    Jan 5, 2014 at 15:49
  • Most of the Help Center is static network-wide; only a very few parts are editable by site moderators. /help/how-to-ask isn't one of them... I've been thinking lately that "how to obfuscate my info" ought to be a meta Q&A. Jan 5, 2014 at 18:02
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    Same for IP addresses please. RFC5735 says 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24 and 203.0.113.0/24 will do. And for @MichaelHampton: RFC5156 says 2001:db8::/32 is to be used for IPv6. Jan 5, 2014 at 18:26
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    There was already a meta question along these lines, so I answered it. Jan 6, 2014 at 3:44

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