Look at The Church of Scientology’s domain names — Take a
The Church of Scientology owns thousands of domain names, counting over 1,000 registered to protect its leader David Miscavige’s name.
The Church of Scientology knows a thing or two regarding gripe sites. Not only is the controversial organization subject to countless sites lobbing allegations regarding it, but it also runs its own gripe sites. For example, it runs a site at WhoIsJeffHawkins.com to discredit critic Jeff Hawkins.
So it doesn’t come as a big surprise that the organization makes a lot of defensive domain name registrations. I started noticing these domains when the group began consolidating domain names at brand protection registrar Mark Monitor this month.
DomainTools records 3,781 domain names registered to Church of Scientology International and 790 domains to Scientology’s Religious Technology Center. In my research I found hundreds of domains registered by the groups that use Whois privacy, and there are perhaps hundreds or thousands that I did not uncover.
What types of domains are they protecting?
David Miscavige
Domain names counting Scientology leader David Miscavige’s name make up nearly 40% of the domain names with public Whois records. Of the 4,571 domains with public Whois leading back to Scientology, 1,760 contain the name Miscavige. Examples are:
videosdavidmiscavige.com
biography-david-miscavige.info
church-of-scientology-leader-david-miscavige.us
official-site-david-miscavige.mobi
A few of the domains with Miscavige in them are related to David’s relatives.
Other Scientology Names
While Miscavige is the most protected name in the domain portfolio, many of the other domains cover both insiders and critics. Insiders with protected names include Karin Pouw, Gregory Wilhere, David Bloomberg and dozens of others. Almost all of these domains are in the format whoisNAME.tld or who-isNAME.tld, e.g. whoisdavemiscavige.com. Oh, and there’s tomcruise-scientologist.com.
On the critic’s side, there are the domains related to Jeff Hawkins. There are also names critical of David Miscavige’s dad, Ron Miscavige, who became a critic of Scientology. Scientology has a gripe site at ronmiscavigebook.com and also owns ronmiscavige-ruthless.com and ronmiscavigeshameless.info.
Critical Names
There are many combinations of terms you can use to hate on a group and Scientology has a least a few of them covered.
scientologistssuck.info
scientologykills.us
scientologylies.com
scientology-abuse-at-the-top.info
You get the idea.
Fresh TLDs
Scientology has also grabbed some names in fresh top level domains. Here are a few examples:
welcometotheageofanswers.church
scientology.cool
welcometotheanswersage.exposed
Good domain names
Scientology’s portfolio includes some domain names that have good generic value as well. Some examples are:
cause.com
clear.org
flag.org
flag.us
ot.org
theta.com
