Issue 199 -14th October 2005

Internet scammer stands trial

Peter Francis-Macrae, also known by Internet monicker 'Weaselboy', is currently on trial in Cambridgeshire for allegedly making death threats towards Police and Trading Standards. This allegedly prolific spammer, the only UK resident to appear on The Spamhaus Project's Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) list, is thought to have perpetrated scams that netted him something like £1.5 million.

One such scam is said to have offered pre-registrations for the forthcoming .eu domain with a guarantee of success, via unsolicited mail - whereas the bogus operation 'EU Registry Services' which offered the service was not actually a registrar, accredited or otherwise. Another alleged scam involved the solicitation of renewals of expiring domain names. The UK registry operator Nominet won an injunction back in November 2003, preventing Francis-Macrae from using its Whois database.

EURid, the registry operator for .eu, chose to have no contact at all with Francis-Macrae, over concerns that those who had attempted to challenge him in the past had apparently experienced 'denial of service' attacks in the form of bombardment of emails.

This story clearly highlights the importance of always using a reputable accredited registrar such as NetNames to register domains.

To read a BBC article on this story, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4334948.stm.

.tw (Taiwan) update

Just a reminder that .tw will become available first-come, first-served at the second level on 1st November. Those who took part in the 'grand-fathering' process will find out whether they were successful after 27th October when the registry will publish the 'winners'.

.es (Spain) update

And another reminder that .es becomes available at the second level on 8th November.

Orders for both .es and .tw can be placed at www.netnames.com.