$17 billion REA Group to delete adult domains following inquiry

The firm states old domains were from acquisitions and historical activity.

Logo for REA Group has the outline of a house inside a red circle and the words REA Group in black letters

For years, REA Group (ASX: REA), a $17 billion market cap group of online real estate firms, has owned a handful of adult-related domain names. The firm is deleting the domains following an inquiry from Reglike.

REA Group was founded in 1995 at its flagship site realestate.com.au. Its network includes over a dozen sites that it owns outright or has invested in, counting Housing.com and Realtor.com.

Yesterday, a Reglike reader pointed out that the firm owns FindNudeDude .com, FindNudeDude .com.au, and SexOnline .com.au. When I checked, the first two domains forwarded to realestate.com.au.

I ran a reverse Whois at DomainTools on the contact email address and didn’t find any other questionable domains in the portfolio.

In response to an inquiry from Reglike, the firm responded:

The domain names in question were part of the Group’s domain name portfolio as a result of historic activity or acquisitions dating back 10-20 years. They are not required and we’ve instructed our domain name registrar to cancel them.

Historical Whois records at DomainTools for SexOnline .com.au date to 2008. The name in Whois reflects a co-founder of HubOnline, a firm REA Group purchased in 2006. Historical records for FindNudeDude .com date to its 2009 registration date and show that REA Group was the original registrant. A Wayback Machine capture from 2011 shows the domain forwarded to realholidays.com.au, a site that was operated by REA Group but now forwards to VRBO.

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