Registrars taking the spamming route

As if domainer spammers were not enough, domain registrars peddling new, exotic gTLDs are becoming more brazen in their approach.

With several hundred new gTLDs currently live, some registrars blindly send out announcements about the availability of extensions without any apparent opt-in or otherwise targeted mechanism.

Today I received an email from EuroDNS letting me know that I should not be missing the opportunity to register “three excellent new domain extensions“, and in particular .Brussels, .Vlaanderen and .Gent. Pre-registrations are open, which means that between 27 and 32 euro will get me in the queue.

The problem is, I don’t live in Belgium nor have any interest in registering Flemish domain names, so why is that email reaching me?

To be fair to EuroDNS, it was easy opting out of this list, despite not opting in to begin with. Registrars are on a slippery slope with regards to how they send out such newsletters and invitations to the general population; by doing so, they devalue the very gTLDs they are attempting to attract attention to.

Comments

  1. Did you notice,

    essen.jetzt 2,000 EUR

    on this week’s Sedo report? Jetzt means, “now,” in German. It’s a cool extension. I didn’t know jetzt would become an extension. Did you receive promotional about jetzt? Probably not, as it looks to be in demand.

  2. Louise – No doubt, if I lived in upper Westphalia, I might live and breathe “jetzt” domains. Although, to be honest, .scheisse might be more fun.

  3. This gTLD expansion is a joke. What is ironic is I used to own over 800 non .com, .net, and .org domains to protect various brands I run. I now have dropped all but 5 of these domains. It is not worth protecting your brand in the new TLD age by registering domains to prevent others from having it. The better way is to wait until you have an issue and then arbitrate over it. Why hold onto MyBrand.ws when there are now hundreds of MyBrand.abc’s out there!

  4. kd – I am not opposed to gTLDs, having invested selectively and with a long term plan. Still, I despise the tactics of Registrars eager to capitalize on the buzzword, emailing everyone about every single gTLD that rolls out. I don’t need more spam in my mailbox.

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