Nominet suspends 32,000 .Uk domains in a crackdown on criminal use

Responsible for running and keeping the .UK internet infrastructure secure, Nominet has today given an update on .UK domains suspended for criminal activity over the 12 months to October 2018. 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 2017 and 31 October 2018 has again doubled year on year to 32,813. This is an increase on the 16,632 suspensions over the preceding 12 month period which represents around 0.27% of the more than 12 million .UK domains currently registered.

Russell Haworth, Nominet’s CEO says: “The upward trend we are seeing in suspended domains confirms that criminals are continuing to seek opportunities in the UK namespace – be it the issue of counterfeits online, or where criminals relentlessly target consumers with malicious content, via domains registered for phishing.

The number of requests that didn’t result in a suspension was 114 – up from 32 in the previous year. 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 report also provides an update on domains suspended and blocked under Nominet’s proscribed names policy, introduced in May 2014. Over 2,700 domains were flagged – down from around 3,500 in 2017 (2,407 in 2016) – and no suspensions were made.

See the infographic for full details of the report.