ICANN adopts new domain tasting policy
'Free temporary registrations' come to an end.
A new policy adopted by ICANN, the organization responsible for
the assignment of domain names and
IP addresses, has brought the practice
of domain tasting to an end.
Domain tasting is the practice of trying out a newly registered domain
and receiving a full refund if the purchase is cancelled within a
five-day grace period.
Originally designed for registrants to conduct
a cost-benefit analysis on the domain, the practice has since become popular with
spammers and those wishing to host illegal and/or malicious material, such as spamvertised products or malware. For
them, the short lifespan of these domains is not a
big problem, as after five days the domain is likely to have ended up
on most blacklists anyway and they would simply
switch to new domains.
In July 2008, however, ICANN adopted a solution in which
registrars who deleted more than 10 per cent of their registered
domains during a month, would not get the USD$0.20 administration fee
refunded. This already made it a lot less viable to register a large number of
domains at once and indeed, the number of deleted domains immediately
dropped from 18 million to about 2 million. Following the success of
this policy, ICANN has now adopted an even stricter policy, where
registrars must pay $6.75 for each excessive delete.
More details in a report published by ICANN here
(PDF), with comments from Sophos here.
21 August 2009
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