Spamhaus Publishes List of “10 Worst Top Level Domains”

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Spamhaus.org published today a list of the “10 Worst Top Level Domains”

The list is “not a list of the worst TLDs in quantity, several other TLDs have far more spam domains, but they also have vastly more non-spam domains. ”

“This list shows the ratio of domains seen by the systems at Spamhaus versus the domains our systems profile as spamming or being used for botnet or malware abuse.”

“This is also not a list that retains a long history, it is a one-month “snapshot” of our current view.”

“The TLDs listed on this page provide a needed service to spam gangs and in doing so are actually damaging the reputations of their domains and damaging the reputation of any legitimate non-spammers who have purchased a domain from them.

Although nearly all TLD registries (including the Country-Code TLDs, ccTLDs ) claim to be anti-spam, some seem to only factor the revenue made by selling as many domains as possible into corporate policy decisions. The use of these domains (in this case abuse) matters not to their calculations. Some TLD registries will claim it is not up to them, but to their sales-agents (registrars) to deal with any misuse, but if these registrars also do nothing, the problems remain.”

“A good number of the TLDs succeed in keeping spammers off their domains and work to maintain a positive anti-spam reputation. This shows that if they wish, TLD registries can “keep clean” by keeping the spammers and other abusers away.”

According to Spamhaus as of 05 March 2016 the TLDs with the worst reputations for spam operations are:

 

1
.download 75.9% bad domains

 

2
.review 74.4% bad domains

 

3
.diet 73.9% bad domains

 

4
.click 72.5% bad domains

 

5
.work 64.7% bad domains

 

6
.tokyo 50.3% bad domains

 

7
.racing 50.1% bad domains

 

8
.science 50.0% bad domains

 

9
.party 45.5% bad domains

 

10
.faith 44.4% bad domains

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Xavier.xyz says

    I’m surprise .Win is not there.

    Im’ getting 20 emails a day fom .Win scammers. You know the “Domain Service,Domain Expiration” scams?

  3. steve says

    I thought .download was supposed to stay in the dark dark web.

    They actually let it out.

    .diet — yeah that one makes sense. Prey on peoples’ insecurities

  4. Reality says

    .science is being used to give legitimacy to medical pseudo-science spam. I’m sure the registries of these TLDs don’t care though, as long as they’re getting paid.

  6. kingof.top says

    Of course ‘church’ / ‘faith’ are two different things but It’s interesting that the TLD .faith have 44.6 % bad domains while the TLD .church have only 0.2 %.

  7. kingof.top says

    I see.
    I made a short research and I saw that .faith does not have a Special use while .church does.
    This point is probably be the heavier reason.

  9. Nico says

    Can’t believe .top isn’t in number one spot.

    Is that because spam direct from the registry doesn’t count??

  10. kingof.top says

    Believe it, .top isn’t even in this list.
    It’s because in fact there is no spam direct from the registry.
    Probably there was a little intense promo and advertising phase in their beginning but they clearly made a statement against any spam activities or abuse of .top