ICANN posted today that AGP deletes are down 84% which means that abuse of the so-called “domain tasting” system is looking dead.
ICANN | AGP Deletes Down by 84%
Domain tasting was a process where a domain registrar could register a domain-name but cancel it within five days at no cost. Now, if you did this with tens of thousands of domain names, and then cancelled and renewed them every week, you would own a massive pile of domain names and not have to pay the yearly fee. With a portfolio of a hundred thousand domain names, you put a spam page on using an advertising platform (like this one below) to make money out of nothing.
. Some of these companies were making millions of dollars a year out of the advertising revenue alone.
But the real money was made when you sold the domain name to some lousy sucker who wanted it.
It was a bunch of easy money for unscrupulous domain registrars and it attracted a lot of unsavoury and disreputable people to the internet. The whole industry of domain name speculation is based around gamblers who like a bet.
This change means that holding your poker hand now costs you money and has seen a lot of these crappy holding pages disappear. Have you noticed when you make a typo that there are less now ? A good thing for the Internet.
At last, the ICANN is starting to do something about cleaning up the domain registry business. It is not enough, and needs to go much further.
