Security experts have warned that web domains are being bought up by scammers to host fake articles and other spurious content.
A blog post from Netcraft, a UK company specializing in tackling cybercrime, has flagged how it has seen a surge in “health product campaigns that exploit cheap toplevel domains (TLDs), reaching up to 60% of a TLD’s daily domain registrations.”
These often host fake news articles that spoof popular media outlets, and include fake celebrity endorsements. The New York Times, Fox News, The Today Show, and the Daily Mail are a few examples of brands that have been impersonated.
Cheap domains
These articles often contain links to the products they are promoting, and while some of these products and links may be legal, the claims made pertaining to their effects are often exaggerated or misleading. The scammers make money through these affiliate links.
Netcraft also alludes to a similar warning from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which alerted consumers to fake campaigns that made use of celebrities featured in the popular TV show Shark Tank.
These scams often gain exposure via social media, especially Facebook, as user accounts are compromised to post images and links to the fake domains en masse, tagging friends in the user’s account to reach as many people as possible.
The proliferation of cheap domain names has made it easier than ever for cybercriminals to set up fake websites, according to Netcraft, letting them spread their campaigns across many domains.
One such popular cheap domain name with scammers is “.sbs”. Netcraft observed a spike in these domains in the summer of last year, with close to 7,000 distinct IP addresses hosting healthrelated scams in July. “.cloud” is another TLD that has spiked in the number of health scams it hosts.