New Zealand’s ccTLD got a pandemic bump in domain name registrations in the year to 31 March, with registrations up almost 2% to what was then an all-time high to 723,451, according to the Domain Name Commission’s latest annual report released last week. Since then, registrations jumped another 1,002 to the end of June.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about huge changes in the world, mostly negative, but there were some positives and areas of growth. One of these was evidence many businesses went online that weren’t online before, and new business ideas were developed. For Canada’s .ca, the registry released data last week that suggests more Canadians are choosing a .ca domain name for their websites more than ever before with the growth rate nearly tripling since last year, from 0.35% in March 2020 to 0.99% in March 2021. As of the end of March 2021 there were 3,106,723 .ca domain names registered, up from 2,867,598 a year earlier. Today there are 3,157,305 .ca domain names registered.
Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract Covid-19 than to receive the vaccinations.
ICANN Thursday confirmed what everyone expected, and had been listed on their meetings page, that March’s ICANN70 will be held as a Virtual Public Meeting due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine are still spreading on Facebook and Instagram, more than a month after Facebook pledged it would take them down.
In 2011, as the hunt for Osama bin Laden was intensifying and honing in on a region of Pakistan, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign as part of its intelligence operation. The campaign went door to door, under the pretense of public health, in the hope of finding evidence of bin Laden’s hideout.
Cybercriminals are leveraging the recent rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines globally in various cyberattacks – from stealing email passwords to distributing the Zebrocy malware.
A series of cyberattacks is underway aimed at the companies and government organizations that will be distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world, IBM’s cybersecurity division has found, though it is unclear whether the goal is to steal the technology for keeping the vaccines refrigerated in transit or to sabotage the movements.
Interpol has issued a global alert to law enforcement agencies around the world warning them that organised crime networks may try to sell fake Covid-19 vaccines or steal real supplies.
[news release] Improved Internet connectivity and skills have helped many countries to cope with the health and economic crisis from COVID-19. Yet the pandemic has raised the bar for the digital transition and underscores the need to close the digital divides that risk leaving some people and firms worse off than others in a post-COVID world, according to a new OECD report.