Just about 48 hours after one of the worst Tornado’s in US history hit the ground in Moore Oklahoma killing children, adults and causing over $1 Billion in damage, we found over 30 .com and .net and .org domain names registered which gives the indication they are for charitable or relief purposes.
However scanning though all the registrations and sites on the domains only three seem to have been set up by charities or good doers.
We start with the good:
The domain name Mooreoklatornado.com, encourages people to donate to the American Red Cross and has the RedCross website and short code to text contributions and it appears to have been registered by a Good Samaritan by the name of Qlossal Media
Tornadorelieffund.com, is being directed to the American Red Cross and seems to be have registered by a Good Samaritan, Brownstone Strategies
The domain name Mooretornadorelief.com is being directed to Charity International which says its a 501-c-3 charity but the site is directed for the collection of money for the poor not the victims of the storm. While the registrant is a charity I’m not sure that it is any better than anyone else who registered a domain to park it, since the funds collected would not appear to be going to the victims.
Now for the Ugly:
Helpmooreoklahomatornadovictims.com, was registered under privacy and goes to a site for a building contractor out of Tampa, which also operates the site restoringfloridahomes.com
Oklahomatornadorelieffund.com is going to a commercial, totally unrelated website, that we can only assume is trying to get extra traffic from the disaster.
Oklahomatornadofund.org is likewise also going to a commercial, totally unrelated website, that we can only assume is trying to get extra traffic from the disaster.
Okctornadodonate.com website says “I purchased this site to prevent a bogus donation scam. ”
“If you are a legitimate charity contact me to purchase this domain. Otherwise go to redcross.org to donate.”
Hum maybe you should offer to contribute the domain name to a legitimate charity if you really want to help.
As for the bad, these domains are being parked with the registrants making money from people searching for information on the disaster and some are also listed as being for sale:
usatornadorelief.com
tornadosoklahoma.com
tornadodonation.com
oktornadorelief.com
okctornadorelief.com
usatornadorelief.org
The rest of the domain names are either going to a registrar placeholder, not resolving and in general not doing anything that is going to help the victims of the disaster (of course they could have been registered to take them off the market as well).
It should be pointed out that the DNS of a domain can be changed at any moment and the domains can wind up being used to help, profit from or worse try to get donations meant for the victims into private pockets.
Here is a list of those:
animaltornadorelief.com
mooreoklahomatornado.com
mooreoktornado.com
mooretornado.com
mooretornado2013.com
mooretornadoes.com
mooretornadovictimsfund.com
oklahomacitytornado.com
oklahomatornadodamage.com
oklahomatornadofund.com
oklahomatornadorelief.com
oklahomatornadofund.org
oklahomatornadofund.net
oktornadorelief.org
tornadorelieffund.org
oklahomatornadorelief.org
southoklahomacitytornado.com
tornadoboards.com
tornadopublicadjuster.com
tornadopublicadjusters.com
tornadosupport.com
mooretornado.org
mooretornado2013.org
As long as there are disasters there will be those trying to profit and TheDomains.com will continue to track these types of registrations.
