NY Attorney General asks registrars for help in combating coronavirus domain name scams

Coronavirus Scams

It’s always sad to see people try to profit off of tragedy, but then again that’s why they call scammers – scammers. Domain names can give people the outward appearance of being an authority, but the cost of admission is often under $10 which sets a low bar. Now New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking registrars to help stop scammers registering launching website on coronavirus-related domain names.

New York attorney general Letitia James has asked GoDaddy and other domain name registrars to find out how they are guarding against the registration and misuse of coronavirus-related domains for deceptive advertising, phishing schemes, malware, and other virus-related hoaxes.

“While online scams tailored to major news events have been around for more than a decade, and there are legitimate uses of domain names with coronavirus in it, the current environment demands the highest vigilance,” she told GoDaddy. (Source – Multichannel News)

Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of articles covering the registration and misuse of coronavirus domain names. While not every domain related to the coronavirus is being used by scammers, far too many are and consumers are getting scammed at the worst time possible.

Go Daddy themselves owns Coronavirus.com which they are currently forwarding to the World Health Organization, i.e. they’ve kept the domain out of scammers hands and are using it for good. That being said, there has been a high-volume of coronavirus-related domains registered over the past couple of months and consumers need to be more vigilant than ever now in verifying that the site they’re on is what it says it is.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton