Reglikedomain industry desk

Amazon buys Prime.xxx domain name

Amazon buys Prime.xxx domain name

Prime.xxx registered by Amazon.com.

Amazon.com has picked up the domain name Prime.xxx, an interesting (likely defensive) domain name registration.

The firm’s Amazon Prime program has millions of members. It started out offering free two day shipping for $79 a year. It has since added additional benefits, such as unlimited streaming of a sizable video library.

So why Prime.xxx? It’s probably just a defensive registration. It prevents someone from starting a streaming video service at Prime.xxx.

The firm tried to hide this registration, using a whois privacy service to shield its identity. Still, it left the technical contact as itself:

AmazonPrime.xxx is registered with the same whois privacy service, but the privacy service on that domain also covers the technical contact information in whois.

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