Internet authority purges dodgy ‘.nz’ websites
The internet authority that regulates New Zealand’s branch of cyberspace has forced 103 ‘‘.nz’’ websites offline for providing false contact information.
The purge, which took place between October and March, followed concerns from cybersafety organisation Netsafe that New Zealanders had a false sense of security about ‘‘.nz’’ websites, which can be run from overseas and need not have any connection to New Zealand.
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investigation at the beginning of October found numerous ‘‘.nz’’ websites had been registered using addresses and phone numbers that had been made up.
One Christchurch teenager was surprised to find a ‘‘.nz’’ website from which he bought shoes that were never delivered was registered to an owner in China who provided a phone number that was never answered.
Another ‘‘.nz’’ store targeting Kiwis had been registered to the address of the Marriott Hotel in New York’s Times Square.
The Domain Name Commission, which regulates the ‘‘.nz’’ space, said it cancelled 103 ‘‘.nz’’ websites in the six months to the end of March for providing it with incorrect or invalid registration details, up from only two in the previous six-month period.
Overall there are more than 700,000 ‘‘.nz’’ domains registered.
Former domain name commissioner Debbie Monahan agreed in October that the authority could conduct random checks on the ‘‘.nz’’ registry to check that registration details were not fake.
Her successor, Brent Carey, said some of the 103 ‘‘.nz’’ cancellations were the result of such random checks and some had been prompted by complaints.
Despite the clean-up, the commission is now allowing website owners who are not in trade to withhold their addresses and phone numbers from the publicly searchable register of ‘‘.nz’’ sites for privacy reasons. Fifteen thousand website owners had taken up that option, Carey said.
The commission struck a deal with government cyber-security agency Cert NZ in June that ensures Cert NZ can still access the withheld information.
Website registrants still had to make their name and an email address public on the register, which was often not required by overseas registries that had ‘‘gone dark’’, he said.