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8,000 .UK DOMAINS SUSPENDED AS LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INDUSTRY COLLABORATE TO KEEP .UK SAFE

Discussion in 'Nominet General Information' started by Acorn Newsbot, Nov 14, 2016.

  1. Acorn Newsbot

    Acorn Newsbot Junior Member

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    Nominet has today published its update on .UK domains suspended for criminal activity over the 12 months to October 2016. Nominet suspends domains following notification from the police or other law enforcement agencies that the domain is being used for criminal activity.

    The criminality report shows that the number of .UK domains suspended between 1 November 2015 and 31 October 2016 has more than doubled year on year to 8,049, which represents around 0.08% of the more than 10 million .UK domains currently registered.

    Russell Haworth, Nominet’s CEO says: “We want to make .UK a difficult space for criminals to operate in and the number of suspensions shows how the wider law enforcement community and the domain name industry are able to use an established process to take action, together.”

    The number of suspensions is an increase on the 3,889 suspensions over the preceding 12 month period. Nominet received more requests from all reporting agencies including, for the first time, requests from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU). The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) which processes and co-ordinates requests relating to IP infringements from nationwide sources is the main reporting agency with over 7,500 requests, followed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) and Trading Standards.

    The number of requests that didn’t result in suspensions was less than one percent (77). Reasons for domains not resulting in suspension include the domain name already being suspended by the Registrar or being transferred to the IP rights holder as a result of a court order in the meantime.

    The number of suspensions that were reversed was 13. A suspension is reversed if the offending behaviour has stopped and the enforcing agency has since confirmed that the suspension can be lifted.

    Russell Haworth continues: “With the vigilance of law enforcement agencies we are able to respond swiftly to suspension requests. This period saw a change in legislation making some formerly legal highs illegal. This explains the number of suspensions that were reversed, due to websites not responding quickly enough to changes in the law and being reinstated once links to offending products had been removed.”

    The report also provides an update on domains suspended and blocked under Nominet’s offensive names policy, introduced in May 2014. 2,407 domains were flagged for potential breach of the offensive names policy and one suspension was made.

    Click the image below to see the infographic with full details of the report.

    [​IMG]

    Nominet is a trusted guardian of the .UK namespace. In addition to this annual criminality report, there is the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) – Nominet’s award winning mediation based process for resolving disputes between parties over the registration or use of .UK domain names. It aims to provide a clear, quick and cost-effective process outside of the formal court system and is accessible and fair to both those complaining and domain name registrants. Furthermore, in October 2016 Nominet was appointed by the National Cyber Security Centre to run a Domain Name System (DNS) resolver service to help protect government and all Public Service Network (PSN) connected organisations from malware, phishing, botnets and other threats.

    The post 8,000 .UK DOMAINS SUSPENDED AS LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INDUSTRY COLLABORATE TO KEEP .UK SAFE appeared first on Nominet.

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  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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  3. Skinner

    Skinner Well-Known Member

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    What exactly is an "offensive name" ? 2k+ possibles seems high.
     
  4. Bailey United Kingdom

    Bailey Well-Known Member

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    'Personal or business attack names' - Sucks etc, etc (or far worse) probably falls into this category
     
  5. Murray

    Murray Well-Known Member

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    BrandSucks names aren't a police matter are they?

    I remember a DRS against someone who had names like *brand*ruinedmylife.co.uk

    The decision from Nominet was no action, which was appealed, but the original no action upheld
     
  6. Skinner

    Skinner Well-Known Member

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    Wasn't that the eye laser DRS ?
     
  7. Murray

    Murray Well-Known Member

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    That's the one
     
  8. Edwin

    Edwin Well-Known Member

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    In the past, it's been domains that the police have linked to the sale of counterfeit goods, phishing, illegal services etc.

    But it's a slippery slope since although the web's almost certainly safer with them suspended, it's still giving a huge amount of power to the police and to Nominet to take action outside the normal judicial process.
     
  9. invincible

    invincible Well-Known Member

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    Quoted from page 19 of this December 2013 report by Lord Ken Macdonald QC.

    "5.4 - This is because, as I explain in Chapter 7 of this Review, indicator terms such as ‘rape’ may occur in a multitude of entirely innocent contexts. For example, many domain names containing the word ‘rape’ may offer counselling or advice services, or refer to agricultural seed. Equally, the word may be picked up in a term like ‘therapist’. A well-known Internet pen retailing company called Pen Island notoriously boasts the domain name www.penisland.net . This appears to be inadvertent. And a screen for a particular Anglo Saxon term will falsely identify any phrase containing the letters that make it up, for example, Scunthorpe."

    Words such as "rape" and "incest" are commonly found within longer words and within perfectly innocent domain names containing multiple words. The system Nominet has flags all newly registered domain names containing those two words, and a small number of other words, on a daily basis and the registrations are examined to see if they form domain names that would be considered offensive.
     
  10. invincible

    invincible Well-Known Member

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    No these are not offensive domain names. I'm not sure why you've put "Personal or Business attack names" in quotes because I can't find that phrase used within the report.
     
  11. invincible

    invincible Well-Known Member

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    These are indeed domain names deemed to be linked to criminal activity by the police.

    An offensive domain name could be a domain name that includes one or more specific words from a very small list. Most of the time false positives are flagged.

    Anyone registering blackincestrape.co.uk for example would likely see it suspended and/or cancelled.
     
  12. Skinner

    Skinner Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure incest is on this list, given the content on the .co.uk, rape also has sex related stuff, I'm stopping googling now, before I hear helicopters hovering above and my door being kicked in.
     
  13. Bailey United Kingdom

    Bailey Well-Known Member

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    Yes indeed I did mistakenly use.double quotation marks instead of the more acceptable single marks as when giving prominence to specifics relating to narrow fields of comment
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 15, 2016
  14. invincible

    invincible Well-Known Member

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    No you didn't. You used single quote marks. Look back at what you actually posted. I asked why you'd put the particular phrase in quotes (I didn't mention a type of quote mark) because I couldn't find it anywhere within the report. Clearly you invented what you put in single quotes yourself and it wasn't something you quoted from the report. Regardless, you were incorrect about the assertion you invented and put within single quote marks. :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2016
  15. invincible

    invincible Well-Known Member

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    I didn't follow what you put above for a while but now I realise. You mean, I presume, "given the content" [hosted on the web site that incest.co.uk and rape.co.uk domain names resolve to]. Correct? If so, Nominet aren't policing the content of web sites with respect to potentially offensive domain names, only the meaning of the small list of monitored words contained within actual domain names. Hence my previous example of blackincestrape.co.uk, even without name servers so it couldn't actually resolve within the DNS, would be flagged and likely suspended and/or deleted because of the probable (I am not a judge) illegal act described within "blackincestrape". The domain name "i-like-grape-juice-for-breakfast.org.uk" would also be flagged but clearly doesn't describe an illegal act as far as I am aware!

    rape.co.uk (don't look at any associated web site) contains a single word and wouldn't be suspended because it's not descriptive enough of an illegal act. {real-person}-should-be-raped.co.uk would likely be suspended because it clearly does describe something that is almost certainly illegal.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2016
  16. Bailey United Kingdom

    Bailey Well-Known Member

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    Yes Whatever - It seems to me that you need to revist the appropriate use of 'single quotation marks and their correct usage. Is their a reason you constantly attack me an my posts. I am diagnosed with mild onset of dementia. - probably got worse after sues sudden death - I'll delete my membership if it makes you happy. Guess that's also the reason how I've also found myself in this supervised retirement home below the qualifying age
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2016