Newfold settles Meta cybersquatting lawsuit

Newfold Digital says it has settled a cybersquatting lawsuit with Facebook owner Meta, and will make an undisclosed payment to Meta as a result.

Judging by the registrar’s press release, it’s pretty much bent over for Meta without actually admitting any wrongdoing.

Meta is to get “trusted notifier” status at Newfold following the settlement, meaning it gets a fast-track to take down domains it believes infringe its trademark or are engaging in other nefarious schemes.

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 against New Venture Services, a subsidiary of Newfold, then known as Web.com.

Meta had claimed that NVS was in the business of registering expired domains, at least 78 of which infringed Meta’s trademarks, and then monetizing or trying to flip them.

All the domains at issue in the case will be transferred to Meta, and Newfold said it “recognizes Meta’s legitimate interest in enforcing Meta’s intellectual property rights”.

It further said it is “improving its processes for all DNS abuse and trademark abuse in the domain name aftermarket, including for trademark holders to report infringing domain names to stop abusive registration practices”.

One of the largest registrar groups, Newfold is the holding company for brands including Network Solutions, Register.com, and SnapNames.

DropCatch acquires 300 more registrars

Almost half of all ICANN-accredited registrars are now under the control of a single business, after DropCatch.com owner TurnCommerce bought 300 more accreditations.

Numbered shell LLCs named DropCatch.com 1546 LLC through DropCatch.com 1845 LLC were recently approved for Registrar Accreditation Agreements, according to ICANN records.

This brings the total number of registrars operating under the DropCatch brand to over 1,500, or almost 47% of the total ICANN currently advertises as 3,323.

It was almost 10 years ago when DropCatch last upped its registrar count, acquiring 500 accreditations in December 2016.

More registrars means more registry connections and a greater chance to re-registered expired domain names when they drop.

Competitor Newfold Digital, owner of the SnapNames brand, has over 500 accreditations.

“Bulletproof” registrar takes a bullet to the head

ICANN has terminated a rogue registrar that claimed it offered “bulletproof” domain registrations services.

Fewmoretaps, which went by the ironic d/b/a Trustname.com, will lose its right to sell gTLD domains names on September 11, having repeatedly failed to chase up abuse reports over many months.

In an ICANN Compliance termination notice, the Org alleged that Trustname dragged its feet when responding to reports of its customers impersonating banks and a government tax agency — phishing in other words.

The Estonia-based registrar had bragged about being “bulletproof” and a “registrar built for businesses in competitive niches that often face false or bad-faith abuse reports.”

Its web site said it would disregard DMCA takedown notices and would only remove domains if it received court order from each of the three jurisdictions in which it operated — the US, Estonia, and Saint Kitts & Nevis.

That would be a tall order for any abuse reporter, but unfortunately for Trustname the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement now requires registrars to take prompt action on valid abuse reports.

It was not doing so, according to ICANN, and the registrar’s promises to come into compliance proved inadequate.

Trustname had received three public breach notices over the last few months, though Compliance had been trying to get it to clean up its act behind the scenes since at least February this year.

“Bulletproof” registrar gets third ICANN bollocking

Trustname.com, a company that advertises itself as a privacy-devoted “bulletproof” registrar, is still refusing to suspend domain names used for phishing, malware, and payment card theft fast enough, according to ICANN.

The Org has sent its third notice of contract breach in five weeks and given Estonia-based Trustname, also known as Fewmoretaps, until August 6 to come back into compliance or lose its accreditation.

ICANN’s notice is focused on one domain this time, which it said was confirmed as hosting “phishing, payment‑card harvesting, and malicious client‑side code” about a week ago.

Trustname confirmed the domain, which Compliance did not name, as abusive on July 11, but it remained up until July 14 when the registrar correctly applied the clientHold suspension status after repeated nagging from ICANN, according to the notice.

“The actions the Registrar took were not prompt,” ICANN said, calling this a violation of Section 3.18.1 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Compliance first publicly reported Trustname’s alleged sins on June 10, accusing the company of dragging its feet and allowing abusive registrants to transfer their domains out rather than immediately suspending them.

GoDaddy may “exit India” over cybersquatting legal battle

GoDaddy has said it may be forced to leave the Indian market if a court ruling forcing it and other registrars to reveal the identities of registrants is not reversed, according to a report.

Reuters has scooped 5,000 pages of documents the company filed as part of its appeal of a December 2025 court ruling, which said that registrars must hand over Whois info to parties with “legitimate interests” within 72 hours.

In its High Court appeal, GoDaddy said it has no way to determine who has a legitimate interest to such data, and that to hand it over would put its customers privacy and security at risk, Reuters reported.

Namecheap and Hosting Concepts (Registrar.eu) have also challenged the ruling, the report said.

The December ruling came as a result of lawsuits filed by 20 companies including Amazon, McDonald’s and Microsoft, which are worried about cybersquatters, phishers and fraudsters impersonation their brands.

ICANN already has policies in place that deal with when registrars have to hand over Whois/RDAP records, but they largely concern DNS abuse like phishing and malware rather than IP infringement and fraud.

Blacknight acquired by Your.Online

Blacknight Solutions, Ireland’s first ICANN-accredited registrar, has been bought by Your.Online for an undisclosed sum.

The registrar joins dozens of brands, mainly but not exclusively in the hosting space, under the Your.Online umbrella.

Your.Online describes itself as a “group of founder-led digital service providers”, and as such Blacknight founders Michele Neylon and Paul Kelly are expected to stick around in their current leadership roles.

Neylon said on social media that the existing staff will also be retained and that customers should not notice anything different due to the transaction.

Other registrar brands in the group include Gandi, Heart Internet, and DI sponsor Realtime Register.

Your.Online formed a few years ago from the merger of Gandi and Total Webhosting Solutions.

“Bulletproof” registrar gets an ICANN bollocking

ICANN has slapped an intensely privacy-focused registrar that compares its stance on takedowns to Elon Musks with a lengthy breach-of-contract notice, claiming that the company is disregarding legitimate abuse reports for no good reason.

Estonia-based Fewmoretaps, which changed its brand to Trustname.com not long after its accreditation was approved in early 2024, has been friendly to malware distributors that use its services, according to ICANN.

The breach notice claims that Trustname, after it had discovered that an abuse report was valid and that one of its customers’ domains was being used to spread malware, did not suspend the domain as required.

Rather, it gave the registrant a three-day headsup to move their domain to another registrar, according to ICANN.

It additionally ignored multiple abuse reports, often for spurious reasons, the notice claims, often only taking action on abusive domains after ICANN Compliance itself got it touch.

Trustname says it is a “registrar built for businesses in competitive niches that often face false or bad-faith abuse reports” and makes hay out of the fact that it offers “bulletproof” privacy by masking registrants details behind two different proxy services located in different jurisdictions.

While the company’s web site claims ad nauseam that its services are not to be used for illegal purposes such as child abuse material and opioid sales, it boldly states that it “disregards” copyright infringement notices.

“Like Elon Musk, we have a strong aversion to individuals who exploit the DMCA, as we believe it lacks legal authority for the vast majority of the world’s population,” the site states.

IP matters are not covered by ICANN contracts, which defined abuse as malware, pharming, phishing and a subset of spam, of course.

Trustname’s site states that it will only take action against domains in “extreme scenarios”.

Such scenarios include “using your website to host illegal content (that we have confirmed after thorough investigations) and getting court orders from all three jurisdictions.”

The three jurisdictions are the US and Saint Kitts & Nevis, where its proxy partners are located, and its home nation of Estonia. Saint Kitts-based Harakiri (Perfect Privacy LLC) was specifically chosen because court orders are hard to come by there.

The company additionally states, in what could be interpreted as an admission of guilt by ICANN Compliance standards:

We will never take any action against a domain name simply because someone filed a complaint – even if your report indicates a violation of our terms. We will only be obligated to take action when we get the relevant court orders.

Trustname, which had fewer than 1,500 gTLD domains under management at the last count, has been given until July 1 to come back into compliance or risk losing its accreditation.

Team Internet says domains business sale imminent

Team Internet expects to be able to announce the sale of its domains business in the next several weeks, coming at the end of a turbulent 2025 that saw revenue, and its share price, tumble.

The company — home to registry and registrar brands including CentralNic, BrandShelter, Moniker and domaindiscount24 — said of its Domains, Identity & Software (DIS) segment in a recent trading statement:

Discussions continue with selected parties regarding a potential disposal of the DIS segment, which the Board will pursue where it delivers fair value. While there can be no certainty that any transaction will be agreed, or as to its terms, the Board expects the outcome of the strategic review, including any agreement relating to a potential disposal of DIS, to be announced in the first half of Q3. Subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals, the Board expects any resulting transaction to complete during 2026.

That suggests a deal could be announced anywhere from this week to mid-August.

Team Internet got badly burned by Google after the advertising giant changed the way it allows parking companies to monetize domains in early 2025. Its revenue per thousand page views was cut in half, down by 51% to $34 million last year.

The company is now talking about a legal case against Google (which it did not name directly), saying it is “pursuing a substantial damages claim against a major technology company, arising from anti-competitive conduct”.

In its audited 2025 results, announced Friday, the company said its DIS segment was down 4% to $194.6 million, with adjusted EBITDA up 10% at $21.4 million as it pursued a strategy of squeezing more profit out of each customer rather than pushing volume.

The Search segments, most affected by Google’s antics, saw its top line down 59% at $222 million, with EBITDA down 84% at $9 million. Overall, Team Internet saw revenue down 40% at $481.9 million, with EBITDA down 54% at $42.7 million.

The company also disclosed that it has had trouble meeting its financial commitments to its lenders, but that it has come to arrangement to have the banks forgive the transgressions.

It plans to either refinance or use the proceeds from the DIS disposal to service its debts.

Four registrars get terminated

Four companies have had their gTLD accreditations terminated, as ICANN continues to clear up its backlog of long-dormant deadbeat registrars.

The unrelated entities are US-based Domus, Finland-based Globis, Hong Kong-based Overcasts, and Wanyuhulian Technology from China. They’ve all lost their ICANN contracts as of May 29.

No domains are at risk, as none of the registrars had any gTLD names under management. Two of them never sold a single domain.

All of the companies in question were in breach for failing to pay their accreditation fees. One of them inexplicably had its accreditation renewed last year despite already being past due.

Whois about to get even more useless

Trying to get hold of a domain registrant via their Whois record? It could be about to get even more difficult following an ICANN advisory that gives GoDaddy a pass for its current practices.

The advisory could make it harder for domain buyers to contact the owners of domains they are interested in, and easier for registrars to sell their domain brokerage services.

There’s a strict requirement under the current ICANN Registration Data Policy that registrars “MUST Publish an email address or a link to a web form to facilitate email communication” in their RDAP/Whois output.

The web form option is pretty much the de facto standard; the registrant’s email address is publicly redacted, but the registrar offers to forward communications to the address it has on record.

But there’s been some controversy about what “facilitate email communication” means.

If you query a domain sponsored by the likes of Tucows or 101domain, you’ll get a form that allows you to submit free text much like you would with a regular email.

With the likes of Markmonitor or Porkbun, you’ll get the same type of form, but only after you’re verified your own email address. Namecheap provides a proxified email address in its RDAP output, no web form required.

But some registrars, notably GoDaddy and Dynadot among the largest providers, do not give a free text option. You can only select from one of three options — abuse, IP infringement, or a “research” catch-all — and hope the registrant agrees to reach out to you on that very vague basis.

If you’re a domainer, there’s no way to use the GoDaddy form to say “Hey, I like your name, I’ll give you $5k for it.”

ICANN has now clarified that the GoDaddy model is perfectly fine under the policy, which “does not include an explicit requirement that registrars provide a free text option or forwarding capabilities as the means of facilitating the communication”.

What GoDaddy and Dynadot are doing “does not violate current requirements under the Policy”, ICANN stated.

This clarification could mean that other registrars could begin to copy the GoDaddy model, if they believe it will benefit them in some way, such as by making an expensive brokerage service the most efficient way for domainers to contact prospective sellers.