Nominet blocks 22,000 .UK domains for criminal activity

In the last 12 months, domain name registrar Nominet has suspended 22,000 domain names ending with .UK, at the request of law enforcement agencies.

That represents 0.22 per cent of all the .UK in use, and is a reduction on the almost 29,000 domains taken down in the prior year, according to Nominet, which also blocked more than 5,000 domains where criminal activity such as phishing is suspected based on its own data, double the previous year.

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which processes and co-ordinates requests relating to IP infringements from nationwide sources, was the main reporting agency with 21,632 requests in the year to end-October. All told, 47 requests didn’t end up with a suspension, and 15 were reversed on appeal.

“This year, we proactively sought to weed out coronavirus-related domains registered for criminal intent and had put on hold almost 4,000 by the end of October,” said the group’s CEO Russell Haworth. “With less than half passing the due diligence we require to reinstate them, it’s clearly helping keep scams at bay.”