In recent times, there have been a number of domains purchased at Netfleet on the expired auctions that have raised eyebrows.
To recap, some domain names have ostensibly been purchased by legitimate entities; however, upon closer examination and investigation, it was discovered that their “identity” has been borrowed. Have a read of this article to get an understanding of the situation.
Let me be very clear up front – Netfleet did not do anything wrong.
However, their system was able to be easily accessed by certain persons who created accounts using the ABN’s / ACN’s of legitimate entities.
As you can imagine, fake registrations impact on the integrity of the .au domain space (and of the legitimate entities who know nothing of the registrations).
So What’s The State Of Play?
There have been three incidents that I’ve written about.
The first involved someone using the ACN of the National Australia Bank. This was reported to Netfleet, MelbourneIT and auDA. Despite this, it seems to me that nothing has happened. See below for further info.
The second incident that involved 16 domains has been fixed; and the third incident is on it’s way to being fixed. These stories were covered here.
Back to the first incident involving the NAB. These are the list of domains that were supposedly registered in their name.
- technologynews.com.au
- home–loans.com.au
- onlinepaymentsystem.com.au
- callforwarding.com.au
- coincounter.com.au
- networktools.com.au
- bitcointraders.com.au
- silverstone.com.au
Let’s just take the first two as an example. Here are screenshots of the WhoIs; and where the domains currently resolve to (Netfleet parking pages).
Maybe auDA is waiting for someone from the NAB to say these domains are not theirs? Let’s hope the problem gets fixed soon.
Ned O’Meara – 6th June 2016
Disclaimer
It’s just the tip of the iceberg, Neddy. When you look at as many backlink profiles as I do you will see how often this is happening. There are multiple domain scraping tools available some are very good and can search drops from 10 years ago. The entire model is flawed in the modern era and has definitely not kept up with technology.
Indeed Stephen, indeed.