Just minutes after the first report of 2 explosions at the Boston Marathon today, several domain names were already registered and some are already parked.
While many of the domains were registered under privacy some of the registrants were brave enough (orstupid enough) to put their name as the registrant of these domains.
We at TheDomains and as a domainer hate to see these type of registrations so here are the domain names that don’t have privacy on the registrations.
Bostonexplosion.com and bostonexplosions.com are registered to FusionWorks LLC of Saratoga, the domain name bostonmarathonbomb.com who is registered to a Mr. Myers of Queen Anne, MD, bostonmarathonbombs.com is registered to Web Service Resource Associates inc of merritt island, Florida.
Even a “relief” domain was registered, which is especially troubling unless it was registered by a recognized charity.
The domain bostonmarathonrelief.com was registered to Thomas Shaffer of Fort Worth, Texas.
Here are the .com/.net domains that were registered in the first minutes after the explosion:
bostonmarathonbombing.com
bostonexplosion.com
bostonexplosions.com
bostonmarathonexplosion.com
bostonbombing.com
bostonmarathonexplosion.net
bombsinboston.com
pray4boston.com
bostonmarathonattack.com
bostonmarathonbomb.com
bostonmarathonbombs.com
terrorinboston.com
bostonmarathonterrorist.com
bostonmarathonrelief.com
rememberbostonmarathon.com
bostonmarathontragedy.com
Registrars should decline private whois services on these domains. If you’re going to try to profit from a tragedy you should have to come forward and publicly face criticism for it. I don’t give anyone a pass who claims that they’ll use these to raise funds for victims either. If 100% all of the money raised doesn’t go direct, and even if they use just 1% for “operational costs” it’s disgusting and shameful.
These domain registrations represent the true dark and immoral side of this industry. I wish it would stop, but I know it won’t.
At first glance such registrations appear to be worthless, however these types of domains can and are often used to scam people by soliciting donations. It’s a shame that a tragic event can be milked off its core impact and be used as a money-making scam. Expect the second wave of registrations to occur once they find and name the scumbags who did this heinous act of terrorism.
…true dark and immoral side, indeed. Well put, Sean…
Let’s not be so quick to jump the gun and accuse registrants. I did a quick search and found BostonBombs.com available, and I registered it. I don’t want to make money from it so I just redirected it to a major news website. This way it is useful to people and I am not capitalizing on it. As I checked later in the day, all the other extensions of the domain were taken, .net, .us, etc, and so if I didn’t register the .com someone else would have. The domain is getting a lot of traffic but I am not making money from it by choice. As for people who do intend to capitalize on it, let’s let them decide for themselves if that’s what they want to do and let them live with their choice. I see no sense in judging them however.
Nicster
Good for you sir and see your forwarding the domain to the bostonherald.com
I did mention in the post:
“While we don’t know every registrants intention, we do know historically that many of the domain names registered immediately after were done to get traffic and make money parking domains or worse.”
However according to news reported, there are already people using domains and hashtags to steal money from people looking to help victims:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/web-scams-arise-boston-blasts-article-1.1317782?localLinksEnabled=false
Pardon me if I don’t celebrate you taking the “high road”. A lot of us could have gone and registered these domains. The point is about not participating at all. It’s hard to give you credit for this because we all know that if you didn’t, well there’s basically a mob of people who are waiting to pounce on all of these scammers and individuals who have registered these domains looking to profit from scams or simply ppc ads.
People who are in the business, working within the industry (domainers), they shouldn’t be registering these kinds of domains.
If we’re going to have someone playing a part to police things and prevent this, then IMO it should be someone like GoDaddy, Enom etc.
Yeah, it’s great that you’re re-directing the domain, but I still think people shouldn’t even consider registering them in the first place. The argument of well if I didn’t someone else would have doesn’t give you a pass in my opinion. If you turn the domain over to a legit charity, then I’ll totally give you 100% credit for doing the right thing.
I realize that this is just always going to be one of those things, the ugly side of the business, it’s not going to end and it sucks. I’ll say this, any company that takes a stand against it, and willingly exposes those who will try to profit at the expense of the pain and suffering of others, well that company will have my business for life.
Rich @ Demand Media, Blake @ GoDaddy, I think many if not all of us would support your companies having a policy of refusing privacy protection on domains that are registered after some kind of tragedy.
@Sean Sullivan
My personal view is that it’s nobody’s concern as to what domains a registrant registers. After all, it’s the registrant’s money being spent. I do think fraud and misuse needs to be taken seriously and curtailed and that the registrars are probably best to police that, but other than that, and barring obvious trademark violations, we’re free to register what we want. You’re making a moral or ethical judgement but you can’t pass that on to others. Also, it’s one thing to register a domain like this once in awhile (I only registered 1 domain), and quite another to be making block registrations of dozens of names, but even in the latter case it’s the registrant’s choice. I tried to target something that I thought would have a lot of traffic and indeed, my domain BostonBombs.com is getting about 500 pagehits daily. I feel better that it’s been redirected to a Boston news website rather than being in the hands of a fraudster or even just somebody wanting to make money from the traffic. But I feel the registrant should be able to monetize a domain like this if they so chose, though it was not my own choice according to my own ethics. I’m in no position to judge others’ ethics as long as they are acting within the law. With those considerations, nobody can tell me what I can and cannot register.
Michael Berkens- I registered the site bostonmarathonrelief.com and within minutes of registration I had it forwarding to the crowdrise site so ALL FUNDS would go to the American Red Cross. Had you gone to my site before writing this you would have seen that. I understand your concern with many of the sites, but before publicly defaming me I wish you would have just gone to the site and donated to the American Red Cross.
I hate domainers taking advantage of situations of tragedy.
Who tries to profit on cancer victims searching for CAUSEOFMESOTHELIOMA.COM or CAUSESOFMESOTHELIOMA.COM so they can understand why they are dying.
Or from people looking for help BATTLINGBREASTCANCER.COM.
This is just like those people that went registering names like CLEANINGUPOILSPILLS.COM the same month as the BP Oil Spill in the North Sea. Or people that register SUBWAYSHOOTING.COM the same month as the Bronx subway shooter was found guilty.
Scum. All of them.
@unknowndomainer
Do you know that SUBWAYSHOOTING.COM is actually owned by the person who owns this very website? LOL!
Thanks for your input.
Thomas
Thanks for the update.
Nicster
So is childporn.com ok to own and make money off of?
@ Michael Berkens
As I explained, if a domain is being used within the limits of the law, then I feel it is ok. However I believe that in any registrar’s terms of service, they have the ability to cancel certain domains. This actually happened to me once, I had a “sucks” domain registered with a certain smaller registrar, and they emailed me asking me to transfer it to another registrar, telling me that “this is not the image we want to portray for our registrar”. So I complied and transferred it out. I was using it to forward to a ComplaintsBoard page on how a certain registrar does bad business.
Now back to these Boston bombing domain names, I noticed several at Godaddy have been taken by Godaddy because the domains were being used illegally or fraudulently. I am using it legally as I have it forwarded to BostonHerald.com. I have not received any notice from Godaddy and I don’t expect to. I feel it is right that registrants have their domains taken or canceled when they are being used illegally or fraudulently.
To your question about childporn.com, I think it could be in a registrar’s jurisdiction to cancel such a domain, I see it is with Moniker.com. I notice the website is about prevention of child porn, so it’s being used legally and positively. In this case the registrar should be fine with the domain’s registration.
I made the point earlier that it seems you have registered several of these sorts of domains as mentioned by unknowndomainer, so it’s interesting that you would write an article about misuse of domains when you’re monetizing such domains yourself. But again, I don’t judge that or you, it’s up to you how you use them, as long as you are within the limits of the law and ICANN rules. I did agree with the comment by Thomas Shaffer that you could have seen how he was using his domain before publishing his name in an article about fraudulent uses of Boston bombing domain names.
@Nicster
All those names are for sale at MWD.com. I’m sure there’s a moral or ethical line in the domaining sand somewhere, I’m just not sure where it is.
I wonder how much for SubwayShooting.com?
And then the registrar cancels your domain name (supposedly) for illegality or fraud, even if you submit as much proof as possible (sans a court order) that it’s (supposedly) not. Unless one doesn’t mind, one can hope that never happens.
It’s somewhat easier to determine possible illegality or fraud if it’s based in the registrar’s immediate jurisdiction. It gets harder to ascertain that the farther out.
Beyond that, it’s solely up to the registrar to decide for themselves whether keeping such a domain registration poses issues for them or not, despite what others think.
One of the domains I checked on the day of the tragedy was BostonBlasts.com and it was taken, but later I saw Godaddy had repossessed it for misuse and the DNS had changed. They released it and I just hand registered it, and forwarded it to the Boston Herald website as I did with BostonBombs.com.
I did not register any Boston related domains but we should defend the rights of people who want to register whatever domain they want to register.
Do you want to make the registration of boston bomb whatever .whatever to be a crime?
Do you want some government agency or committee to review all domains before they are registered so everyone would have to get approval to register a domain?
You can’t legislate morality and none of us should welcome restrictions on any domain registrations.
Be careful what you wish for without thinking about the logistics.
Rob
Its a watch list not a go and arrest people list, as the warning said in part disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and man made disasters like bombings:
As homeland security said:
“”Some of the domains are likely to take advantage of those interested in learning more details about the explosions. Others will likely target individuals looking to contribute to fundraising efforts. It is unclear what each registrants intent may be, but historically scammers, spammers and other malicious actors capitalize on major news events by registering such domains.””
That is based on all previous events.
In realty if you register a domain like bostonbombingrelieffund.com its either going to be used by a registered 501-c-3 charity to collect money, but that is highly unlikely to be registered under privacy, to set up a scam charity that not only takes away money from the victims but goes into someone’s pocket which is criminal or three to get type in traffic and make PPC from those looking to contribute to a charity, maybe not illegal but not morally defendable
@ Michael Berkens
But remember your article was mainly about domains such as ‘Bostonexplosion.com’, precisely the sort of domains you yourself register, yet you named some such registrants here, and say you ‘hate’ to see these sorts of registrations and say that registrants not using privacy may be stupid, yet you yourself don’t use privacy on these domain types. Just sayin’…
On the point of the “fund” type domains not being morally defensible, again I’d say look at how they’re being used case by case rather than making sweeping generalizations.
@ Nicster,
You just don’t get it. Most people find what you’re doing, to be in poor taste to put it politely.
Just because you can do something, register a domain, it doesn’t mean that you should. And don’t tell me it’s to protect the innocent, because then you should get busy registering hundreds of .org domains which will be used (in some cases) by fake charities.
Oh wait, those don’t get type-in traffic…
We’ll see what you do with the domains a year from now, or if they get offered up for sale with a “portion of the proceeds” going to help victims.
Just because you can register a domain doesn’t mean you should, show some restraint and class. If other people want to register these domains for their own personal gain, let them. They’ll be caught and prosecuted or just vilified publicly.
I thought that you would have actually stopped acquiring these urls, but apparently not, instead you just dig in and make things worse for yourself.
@ Sean Sullivan
I registered them to keep them out of the hands of people who would try to use them wrongly or monetize them. I only registered 2 domains related to this incident. Seems odd that you appear to be so passionate about why people choose to register these sorts of domains, yet on the other hand tell me that I should not care why people choose to register these sorts of domains.
Nicster