10 Registrars Responsible for 83% of Spam Websites

83% of illicit websites, that is those web sites advertised through spam, can be traced back to just ten domain name registrars, according to a study released by Knujon (“no junk” backwards) this week. A further seven per cent can be attributed to the next ten registrars on Knujon’s list.The worst offending registrar with the most domains advertising spam over the past six months was Beijing-based XinNet, a subsidiary of a Chinese conglomerate called Sino-i Technology Limited, who also held the same position in Knujon’s May 2008 study.Domain names registered through XinNet were responsible for 345.4 spam emails per domain name, close to six times more spam emails than the registrar responsible for second most spam per domain, Register.com, who was responsible for 59 spam emails per domain. RegTime was third (54) and then Network Solutions (52.5).Of the large registries, Enom, Network Solutions, Register.com and Wild West Domains were both in the overall top ten of registries favoured by spammers and in the top ten registries worldwide.Criticism of the report came from Bill Mushkin, chief executive at Spot Domain LLC (a.k.a. domainsite.com), who “called Bruen’s study ‘amazingly unscientific,’ and said it fails to measure how well registrars respond to reports about spammy domains,” reported the Washington Post. “In any event, he said, while registrars have a duty under their contract with ICANN to suspend domains with blatantly false or missing data in their WHOIS contact records, there is nothing in their contract that requires them to shutter domains advertised in spam.”The Knujon report is available to download from:
knujon.com/registrars/The Washington Post report with further comment from Bill Mushkin among others is available from:
voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/02/report_most_spam_sites_tied_to.html