Sued by Meta, Freenom Halts Domain Registrations
Summary: Freenom, the Dutch registrar known for free domain names, has stopped allowing new registrations after Meta sued it in a Northern California court on March 3, 2023, alleging cybersquatting and trademark infringement. Meta's complaint says Freenom's five country-code TLDs — .cf, .ga, .gq, .ml and .tk — made up five of the top ten most abused TLDs in a 2021 Interisle Consulting Group study, and seeks the identities of 20 'John Doe' customers Meta says phished Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users.
Bottom line: Meta alleges Freenom kept licensing new domains to the same customers even after receiving phishing and infringement notices, and that it monetized the traffic through resale and parking pages — a registrar business model built on abuse complaints going unanswered.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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