Security experts have warned that web domains are being bought up by scammers to host fake articles and other false content.
a blog post from Netcraft, a British company that specializes in tackling cybercrime, has detailed how it has seen an increase in “campaigns for healthcare products that exploit low-cost top-level domains (TLDs), reaching up to 60% of a TLD’s daily domain registrations. “
These often include fake news articles that spoof popular media and include fake celebrity endorsements. The New York Times, Fox News, The Today Show and the Daily Mail are some examples of brands that have been imitated.
Cheap domains
These articles often contain links to the products they promote, and while some of these products and links may be legal, the claims about their effects are often exaggerated or misleading. The scammers make money through these affiliate links.
Netcraft also refers to something similar warning from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which warned consumers about fake campaigns using celebrities from the hit TV show Shark Tank.
These scams often gain fame through social media, especially Facebook, as user accounts are compromised to mass post images and links to the fake domains, 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, allowing them to spread their campaigns across many domains, according to Netcraft.
“This makes it more difficult to take countermeasures against cyber attacks because the campaign can be spread across more infrastructure,” the company notes.
One of those popular cheap domain names among scammers is “.sbs”. Netcraft saw a spike in these domains in the summer of last year, with nearly 7,000 different IP addresses playing host to health-related scams by July. “.cloud” is another TLD that has seen an increase in health scams.