|
Written by Dr. James Galvin, Director, Technical Standards and Strategic Relationships at Afilias.
The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic has been fertile ground for scams and misinformation. Social platforms have been in the news for their efforts to protect users from such problems. What are Internet infrastructure providers like Afilias doing to keep spammers, phishers and other criminals from preying on Internet users?
Afilias is a domain name registry company. Domain name registries maintain the authoritative list of all names ending in a certain top-level domain or “TLD” extension (e.g., .info or .org) and provide a directory that enables the proper delivery of mail, the arrival of visitors to a website, etc.
During times of crisis, it is not unusual for new internet scams to launch. For COVID-19, scammers are in overdrive. The Australian Government is listing some great current examples (Fig. 1).
Most of these use a domain name (or names) as a “base of operations.”
Registries can help identify these scams and deter cyber-crime. Registry companies like Afilias (which owns .info, .pro and 20 other TLDs and provides technical services for nearly 200 more) have many years of experience identifying domain registrations that are dodgy and then mitigating any damage they may cause. Afilias’ everyday arsenal for fighting cyber-crime has been instrumental in minimizing COVID-19 related domain abuse, and includes the following:
Registry infrastructure providers are working hard to identify and address domain-based criminal activity related to the pandemic. Responsible operators typically see lower levels of nefarious behaviour because the bad guys know which TLDs are being monitored with vigilance and aggressively protected. Scammers are smart: when they know they’ll be busted, they take their cyber-scams elsewhere. While the public facing companies get all the press coverage, infrastructure providers are quietly and effectively protecting our part of the internet ecosystem.
Sponsored byCSC
Sponsored byVerisign
Sponsored byVerisign
Sponsored byDNIB.com
Sponsored byRadix
Sponsored byIPv4.Global
Sponsored byWhoisXML API