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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