Reglikedomain industry desk

Registrars as part of Villa landgrab — Villa.com changes

Who’s behind this Villa landgrab?

Last year I wrote regarding how someone was buying up lots of country code domain names with villa and villas at the second level.

Since then I’ve continued to watch dozens of similar domain names get purchased/registered with Mark Monitor. All of them have Mark Monitor’s version of Whois privacy “DNStinations”.

Now the final shoe has dropped: Villa.com has moved from Whois privacy at Fabulous to Whois privacy at Mark Monitor.

Was the domain just purchased? Or did the group going following all of the villa ccTLDs buy Villa.com a long time ago and didn’t want the public to know? By keeping the domain at Fabulous instead of MarkMonitor it wouldn’t set up alarm bells regarding a big player being behind the domain. Or did the long-time owner of the domain decide to fully develop the domain and go hunting for all of the ccTLDs?

I have a feeling we’ll find out more soon.

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.

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