The most recent news about the unfortunate Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 points to a disastrous crash in the remote south Indian ocean.
Such a location offers no hope of any survivors; it also makes the task of finding the plane almost impossible.
It seems as if every major TLD related to Flight 370 has long been registered; in particular, Flight370.com was registered on March 7th; its registrant being in California and several hours behind from Malaysia.
Officially, the plane was declared lost on March 8th.
So what could be considered ‘proper use’ for this domain name?
The owner of Flight370.com points it to Amazon’s book search for the terms “aviation, flight safety, accidents” and the link is potentially passing their affiliate id for Amazon.
When one monetizes domains that are related or in direct reference to disasters where the loss of life is paramount, such registrations are definitely unethical, even though not illegal. It is up to the terms and conditions of parking services or affiliate services to determine whether such use is acceptable or not.
To recap, here’s the current status of Flight370 in various TLDs:
- Flight370.com – points to affiliate Amazon search for airplane disasters.
- Flight370.net – points to the registrar it was registered at.
- Flight370.org – it does not resolve.
- Flight370.info – parked at GoDaddy, serving ads.
- Flight370.biz – for sale, at BuyDomains, with a listing price of $500.
- Flight370.us – parked and monetized at NameCheap.
- Flight370.co – parked and monetized at GoDaddy.
This post is 100% true!
The .org does not resolve, but registered in 2012…….Hmmmmm
Aaron – This is indeed eerie, but keep in mind flight numbers are being reused like that. Great find though!
It’s not right to try to profit off of a human tragedy like this.
I feel sorry for people that try to make money this way, kinda wrong in my books
Interesting…