Is it time for Domain Aftermarkets to clean house?

Since the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic ramped up certain players in the industry have cracked down on covid and corona related domain names.

March 26 – DAN (an advertising partner here) tweeted that they would be removing all coronavirus related domain names.

Namecheap announced and reported upon by The Verge:

That it would no longer be accepting any new domain applications including the words “coronavirus,” “covid,” and “vaccine,” among other versions of words and phrases alluding to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Los Angeles-based company says the measure is to prevent abuse and fraud from sites trying to hawk fake products and misinformation and otherwise capitalize on the ongoing global health crisis.

March 27 – GoDaddy announced they were having none of the coronavirus names.

GoDaddy is a bit more tricky than DAN, because GoDaddy would continue to allow the registration of corona/covid names on their registrar.

I started getting emails and the emails have not stopped. An email I got last Friday was from someone I did not know. They expressed a few kind words about the blogs but wanted my input on their names not showing at GoDaddy. They felt this was surely a mistake and I would guess they missed the March 27 announcement.

So a friend said to me later that day, “Why don’t they clean the whole F*****G business up then?”

Prior to all this, I remember a thread where people were reporting heinous names. Names no company wants to be associated with on their platform.

There were those who did not like it, (Oh here come the domain police).

Now I will be the first to say I have pointed out to GoDaddy, Sedo and Name.com names that were calling for the injury or worse to other people. Why would you ever want your names on the same page as that?

Someone scrolling GoDaddy auctions and they see your name at auction and then rapekids.com. It’s not a good look for anybody.

Clean everything up

Now of course this was prior to the pandemic, although there were some really bad names in April that GoDaddy and Sedo removed right away when brought to their attention.

But since there is this focus on keeping out the coronavirus/covid names, should the marketplaces be putting systems in place to clean up everything?

One domain investor who owned a few covid related domain names told me he did not think it was fair. “Why can’t I list a covid name at Sedo but they got rape names?”

Hosting Companies

I read an article on the other side of the spectrum from selling and that’s developing names to commit some kind of cyber crime.
Patrick Martin – Head of threat intelligence, Skurio wrote over at InfoSecurity-Magazine.com that hosting companies should take some drastic steps.

From the article:

Hosting businesses should be more proactive in protecting their customers and the reputations of businesses. They can do this by auditing domain names and checking them against similar existing ones. If there is a clear similarity, yet the registration details are different, they should check with the existing registered holder that they are aware of, or are comfortable with, the new domain. If not, the registration should be paused while the case is investigated further.

The aftermarkets should look to clean things up in my opinion. They started this with Covid-19 might as well finish the job.

Failure to do so allows for certain customers to assume they were targeted. No aftermarket wants that in my opinion.