Recent Posts
- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
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- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
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- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
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- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
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- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
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- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
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- Tucows reports 2023 results
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- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
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- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
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- GoDaddy project unveils brand-blocking calculator
- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
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- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
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- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
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- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
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- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
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- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
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- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
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- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
Freenom is losing another ccTLD after collecting military emails
Controversial free domains provider is reportedly losing its contract to manage Mali’s ccTLD, its second loss in as many months.
The Financial Times quoted Freenom CEO Joost Zuurbier as saying a 10-year-deal with Mali’s government to run .ml was due to expire yesterday. I reported last month that the deal looked like it was ending.
Gabon has also cancelled its contract with Freenom, saying it was bringing the country into disrepute due to the high levels of spam and abuse associated with .ga domains.
And now it seems that along with running a stable of spam-friendly ccTLDs for a decade, Freenom has also vacuumed up over a hundred thousand emails destined for the US military, which uses the highly restricted .mil TLD.
Zuurbier told the FT that he set up email accounts at navy.ml and army.ml domains shortly after taking over .ml in 2013, and quickly started receiving emails intended for American military personnel, before shutting the accounts down.
While he said nothing was marked confidential, the extensive list of documents he reportedly received, according to the FT, appears to frequently include things you wouldn’t want your enemy to read, such as medical data and financial records.
Now that .ml is reverting to Mali government control, there’s a risk this kind of information could fall into enemy hands, the FT reported. Mali is allied to Russia, which at this point in history is no friend of the US.
Zuurbier said he’s been pestering the US government and military for the last 10 years to get them to do something about the problem. The military told the FT it blocks outgoing emails to .ml domains from its own network. There’s presumably little it can do about emails sent from other domains.
Freenom got its ICANN registrar accreditation suspended in 2015 for cybersquatting its competitors. The company is also being sued for cybersquatting by Facebook owner Meta.
It’s not been possible to register new domains in any of the company’s ccTLD since last year.
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