3% of All Internet Sites Are Scams
How some Internet companies are fighting back online fraud successfully
AMSTERDAM, May 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Scamadviser analyzed 7 million domain names and discovered that 3% of all websites have a Trust Score lower than 20 out of 100, meaning that they are (very) likely to be a scam.
The company also discovered that some Internet companies do a much better job at preventing scammers from accessing their services than others.
Good Registrars
The percentage of Low Score Domains differs strongly per registrar (where you register a domain name). Companies like Network Solutions and 1&! IONOS are able to keep the number of possible scam sites below 1%, while others have more than three to four times the industry average.
Registrar |
Hosted Domains |
Low Score Domains |
% Low Score Domains |
Network Solutions |
82,531 |
532 |
0.60% |
1&1 IONOS |
49,002 |
483 |
1.00% |
FastDomain |
33,624 |
552 |
1.60% |
ENOM |
91,405 |
1,650 |
1.80% |
GoDaddy.com |
528,752 |
15,876 |
3.00% |
PublicDomainRegistry.com |
92,461 |
3,074 |
3.30% |
GMO INTERNET, INC. |
29,825 |
1,039 |
3.50% |
NameCheap |
119,754 |
12,546 |
10.50% |
NameSilo |
40,710 |
5,340 |
13.20% |
Alibaba Cloud Computing |
35,925 |
5,139 |
14.30% |
Good Hosting Companies
Website hosting companies like Google and GoDaddy perform remarkably well with only 1.7% and 2.0% of the websites researched being considered malicious. Far below the industry average of 3%
ISP |
Hosted Domains |
Low Score Domains |
% Low Score Domains |
175,561 |
2,975 |
1.70% |
|
64,214 |
1,140 |
1.80% |
|
105,755 |
2,127 |
2.00% |
|
Unified Layer |
68,850 |
1,334 |
2.00% |
OVH |
78,024 |
1,690 |
2.20% |
Hetzner Online |
52,249 |
1,204 |
2.30% |
DigitalOcean |
60,215 |
1,459 |
2.40% |
Cloudflare |
326,325 |
11,905 |
3.70% |
Amazon Technologies |
75,150 |
3,372 |
4.50% |
Shopify |
45,407 |
3,802 |
8.40% |
Namecheap |
48,116 |
8,456 |
17.60% |
Good Registries
The registry owns the top-level domain such as .com, .biz or .store. The Chinese .cn top-level domain seems hardly misused (0.36%) at all. The .co extension, on the other hand, is often misused (5.4%) by scammers as it gives potential scam victims the impression that it is a legit .com site.
Registry |
Hosted Domains |
Low Score Domains |
% Low Score Domains |
cn |
72,014 |
190 |
0.36% |
au |
30,503 |
366 |
1.20% |
nl |
52,255 |
699 |
1.30% |
it |
31,259 |
467 |
1.50% |
pl |
25,431 |
392 |
1.50% |
org |
105,805 |
1,753 |
1.70% |
de |
82,464 |
1,552 |
1.80% |
58,587 |
1,839 |
3.10% |
|
net |
135,170 |
4,317 |
3.20% |
com |
1,832,842 |
72,243 |
3.90% |
ru |
78,952 |
3,457 |
4.40% |
co |
25,024 |
1,342 |
5.40% |
How to Make the Internet Safer?
Clearly, some Internet companies are much better at keeping scam sites at bay than others. The trick seems to be fair pricing and well-structured Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.
The companies struggling the most with a high number of scammy domains seem to be price fighters. For example, some registrars sell domains with the extension .ltd as little as $6.98, .top for $3.98 and .store for $1.88 per year!
Several hosting providers, registries, and registrars have improved their KYC policies with remarkable results. The Danish .dk registry for example was able to reduce the number of online stores selling fakes by 80% in one year by just asking for an ID.
Contact: Jorij.Abraham@EcommerceFoundation.org. Download full report.
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