ICANN, the organization that overlooks everything regarding domain name registrations, has sent a notice of termination to EstDomains. This Estionian domain name registrar is especially known because it is very popular with internet crooks. A reasonably large amount of domain names used for phishing or spam are registered through this Estonian registrar. While we can’t find any actual proof of this, and EstDomains itself has always denied this, insiders do talk about this registrar having a very close relationship with spammers and maybe even being involved in the spamming and hoax-sending itself.

By this termination, EstDomains will no longer be able to directly buy gTLD’s from the registries. Such gTLD’s are for example .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .asia,…
EstDomains is also an .eu accredited registrar. It isn’t clear yet if EURid itself will take action and also end its contract with EstDomains.

The reason for termination of the contract however doesn’t seem to be directly related to any spam-connections. The reason ICANN gives for the contract termination is a conviction of the president of EstDomains in Estonia for fraud, money laundering and forgery.

Whatever the reason is, it will probably cause the internet to become just a little bit safer. Over 275.000 domain names are involved.

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