Name registrations surge with novel coronavirus fears — Virus domain

Another crisis, another surge in domain registrations.

If Verisign still published its monthly lists of top trending keywords (it stopped with August’s list), ‘virus’ would certainly be on the list.

As stated by Verisign DomainScope, .com and .net domain name registrations counting the word ‘virus’ have spiked from single digits per day in December to hundreds per day over the past week. (See graphic above.) And the registrations ahead of the surge were more often related to computer viruses rather than living ones.

Registrations counting the word “Covid”  have also taken off, to the tune of dozens of registrations per day as stated by DomainScope.

I doubt many of the domains will ever be put to use and most will expire. While some domains might have been registered by organizations that want to disseminate information regarding the latest coronavirus, others look like they will be used for nefarious purposes, such as BuyCovid19pill (.) com