Nominet which runs the .UK internet infrastructure has published its latest details of .UK domains suspended for criminal activity over the 12 months to October 2019. The number of .UK domains suspended between November 2018 and October 31 saw a reduction year on year at 28,937 – down from 32,813. This represents around 0.22 per cent of the 13 million .UK domains registered.
Nominet collaborates with ten reporting bodies and received requests from five. Nominet suspends domains after notification from the police or other law enforcement agencies that a domain is being used for crime. The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) which processes and co-ordinates requests about intellectual property (IP) infringements from nationwide sources is the main reporting agency by far, with 28,606 requests, followed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (178) and Trading Standards (90), Financial Conduct Authority (48) and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (31).
The number of requests that didn’t result in a suspension was 16 – down from 114 in the previous year. Reasons include the domain already being suspended due to a parallel process, the domain already being transferred on a court order, or the registrant modifying the website to become compliant following notification.
Five suspensions were reversed; if the offending behaviour has stopped and the enforcing agency has since confirmed that the suspension can be lifted.
Nominet’s proscribed terms policy was introduced in May 2014. Over 1600 newly registered domains were flagged as potential breaches, but no suspensions were made, indicating a high number of false positives.
Domain Watch is Nominet’s anti-phishing initiative that suspends suspicious domains at the point of registration; that saw 2,668 domains suspended. When identified as high risk of phishing, domains will not resolve in the DNS (Domain Name System) until extra diligence is conducted and Nominet is satisfied that the registration does not pose a phishing risk. If a domain is suspended, the registrant will receive an email, telling of the steps required if they feel the suspension was not correctly applied. Of these, 274 successfully passed an additional due diligence and completed the registration process.
Russell Haworth, Nominet’s CEO says: “It’s encouraging to see that our efforts, working closely with the law enforcement community, are having a demonstrable impact on the ability of those intent on causing serious mischief online. We will not tolerate .UK domains being used for criminal activity. Suspensions have fallen for the first time since 2014 indicating that using collective established processes combined with technology-driven interventions is, it seems, acting as a deterrent.”
Detective Constable Weizmann Jacobs of the City of London Police’s PIPCU said: “Partnership working is vital in the fight against intellectual property crime. We work closely with Nominet and the law enforcement community to disrupt criminals who try to operate in the .UK domain and the figures released today demonstrates the success we have had in doing so.
“By collaborative working, we can help protect consumers from the dangers of counterfeit goods and safeguard their personal information when shopping online. When consumers purchase from illicit sites, they are unknowingly handing over their personal and payment details to criminals who often use these to commit further crime.
“In light of the figures Nominet have released, and in the run up to Christmas, we would like to warn online shoppers that there’s more risk when it’s counterfeit. If it looks too good to be true then it probably is; heavily discounted products are often a tell-tale sign that something isn’t right.”
Eleanor Bradley, MD of Registry Solutions at Nominet comments: “We are constantly looking for ways to improve .UK for the millions of individuals and businesses that rely on it. Using Domain Watch to catch domains such as hmrc-taxrefund-gov.co.uk, login-micorosoftoffice.co.uk and netfllx.uk, intent on confusing people for criminal gain is proving fruitful, but we and other likeminded partners as well as individuals must not rest on our laurels. The criminals certainly won’t.”
For full details visit www.nominet.uk/news.
Nominet also provides the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) – a mediation based process for resolving disputes between parties over the registration or use of .UK domain names.
