Cybercrime is on the rise.
There are a lot of real opportunities that exist in the market of so-called “liquid domains“; short, memorable domains that existed for years.
The recent surge in popularity of these domain assets, along with the overnight proliferation of alternate domain markets spanning six and seven number domains, have generated an equal amount of fraudulent activity.
According to domain investors actively trading such assets in the domain aftermarket, there are three types of cybercriminal activity currently ongoing:
- Lying and renegging on agreed upon sales, due to comparable domain activity. As stated by a domain investor: “Last week, agreed on a price of $4200 for an AABB.com domain. After seeing the auction price of xxww.com @ 10k, he raised the price to $6k. Now, will not return my email.”
- Cheating and shill bidding on domain auctions, to promote those that receive low or no bids. Our source says: “I recently lost an auction that was bid on by the domain owner. I figured this out after tracing whois from other domains she won (using different login info) and linking it to the winning bid on the auction I lost. This is a private auction house that I am still buying at, so not willing to give up the site yet.”
- Domain thefts or attempts to compromise accounts holding valuable domain portfolios. According to a targeted domain investor: “My GoDaddy account has been blocked numerous times due to excessive login attempts. I have now changed the account login to a long string including words/letter/characters. I don’t have many names at GoDaddy, but do have several valuable ones.”
To recap: Market opportunities for domain investors create new, matching opportunities for cybercriminals.
Always be aware of these three elements when investing in any new or “hot” domain genre that might be gaining popularity.
