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“Bulletproof” registrar gets third ICANN bollocking

Kevin Murphy, July 17, 2026, Domain Registrars

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.

“Bulletproof” registrar gets an ICANN bollocking

Kevin Murphy, July 2, 2026, Domain Registrars

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.