600 Domain Names Are Suspended in UK Alone to Dismantle Coronavirus Scam Sites

We're in this together. It does sound like a cliched motivational speech, but it's true. The world has been swept over by a pandemic, and everybody must do what they can to beat the nasty coronavirus into submission. Believe it or not, this includes the people responsible for keeping the world wide web going as well. Their work might not be aimed directly at the virus, but it is essential in solving another problem sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nominet blocks the registration of 600 scam websites

We're happy to say that some of them appear to be doing a great job. Nominet, the entity responsible for regulating the registration of .uk domains, for example, saw that shortly after the World Health Organization officially recognized COVID-19 as a pandemic, the scammers started trying to take advantage of the situation.

The coronavirus found its way into spam emails that were distributing malware and phishing scams. Perhaps not surprisingly, the pandemic also sparked an outbreak of fake news and conspiracy theories, and the increased demand for masks, gloves, and other protective equipment opened up quite a few opportunities for fraudsters. COVID-19 is still a pretty hot topic among cybercriminals, and unfortunately, this is unlikely to change any time soon. To contain the fraudulent activity to some extent, Nominet has imposed stricter scrutiny on new domains that might be related to the pandemic.

Normally, registering a domain is pretty straightforward. What you need to do is pick a domain that hasn't been taken, enter your personal and financial details, and process the payment. Thanks to the new restrictions, however, if a website name contains words like "coronavirus" or "covid," the registration will be put on hold until a Nominet employee manually approves it.

Indeed, this will hamper the people who are trying to create legitimate online resources related to the coronavirus. When you consider how rampant the fraudulent activity around COVID-19 is, however, you'll see that the inconvenience is well worth it. It's unclear when the new measures were introduced, but yesterday, Eleanor Bradley, head of registry domains at Nominet, told ZDNet that so far, the registration of about 600 malicious domain names has been blocked. Bear in mind that this is the UK only, and the great thing about the increased scrutiny is that instead of suspending the malicious operation of a website after it has already defrauded users, it prevents it from appearing in the first place. Sadly, this won't solve all our problems.

Users shouldn't let their guard down

Coronavirus-themed scams won't end because of the new measures. Nominet has control only over domains in the UK, and unfortunately, implementing the same measures on a global scale isn't really possible. What's more, no matter how many initiatives aimed at containing the COVID-19 scams organizations take, the cybercriminals won't stop in their search for ways around them, and they will eventually succeed.

The upshot is, just like everyone needs to do their part in the fight against the coronavirus, everyone must be on the lookout for COVID-19-related online scams. Protecting yourself doesn't involve anything unusual. You simply need to make sure that you get your information from reliable sources only, you take everything you see on the internet with a pinch of salt, and you're careful with the links you click. You could say that this is the online world's equivalent to washing your hands regularly and wearing a mask during a global pandemic.