Every website used to be like “www.example.com”. Now I rarely encounter this “www.”. Why did it even exist and where has it gone? I also used to run into websites with legitimate domains, but “ww1.” instead of “www.”, these were probably phishing sites, but how did this actually work on top of legitimate domains?
I think before all browsers ended up filling it in, it was standard practice to set up the server to intercept anything missing that part before the domain name and stick a “www” in front so it wouldn’t just dead end. Basically a redirect.