Alerting auDA

It’s great news that auDA have taken down over 1000 sites yesterday. They certainly went to town with press releases – the big one being in the online version of the Australian Financial Review yesterday. The General Manager, Communications at auDA would have earned her keep this past week!

The sad news is that I first reported this type of activity to auDA back in May. I emailed auDA on numerous occasions with “chapter and verse” (plus wrote about it on this blog), but bureaucracy seemed to get in the way of getting things done. That’s a polite way of putting it. It should NOT be difficult for anyone to report a potential scam – particularly if they back it up with evidence.

As I said to Erhan Karabardak (Director and Deputy Chairman at auDA) yesterday:

“It’s a shame auDA made it difficult for me 5 months ago when I reported the first instances of these. The situation could have been sorted a lot earlier. We’re all on the same side.”

As yet, none of the 1000 domains reported on AFR are in Policy Delete, though I guess it is just a matter of time. Pleasing though to see that the one I wrote about on Domainer yesterday has been taken down – and is also in Policy Delete already.

In Conclusion

This is not about “points scoring” – we are all on the same side in this battle against scammers. The integrity of the .au space is paramount.

All levels of government (and their agencies) in this country want people to report “suspicious, criminal or terrorist activity”. As do many other types of organisations and businesses within Australia. Given that the  .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA) is the body that administers the .au domain space, why should they be any different?

In my humble opinion, auDA should encourage people who are aware of such scams (and have the appropriate evidence) to make contact with them. And they shouldn’t make it difficult either – no complainant wants a bureaucratic response that requires them to jump through too many hoops!

Ned O’Meara – 8th October 2016

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