AUSTRALIA - A South Australian woman narrowly avoided a complete financial disaster after falling victim to a sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) scam that led to the loss of over $800,000. Authorities have since managed to recover a significant portion of the stolen funds, shedding light on the growing threat of cyber fraud in real estate transactions. The victim, who had been in the process of purchasing a property, received what appeared to be a legitimate … [Read more...]
Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Underscores China’s Growing Capabilities in Development
MENLO PARK, CA - DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has rapidly ascended to the top of Apple's App Store charts in the UK, US, and China following its launch on President Donald Trump's inauguration day. This swift rise has raised concerns among tech experts and free-speech advocates, with some labeling it as AI's "Sputnik moment." The application, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, functions similarly to ChatGPT, generating human-like responses to user prompts. Notably, … [Read more...]
50 Million Potentially Compromised In PowerSchool Data Breach
SACRAMENTO, CA - On December 28, 2024, PowerSchool, a prominent provider of educational technology services to over 60 million K-12 students worldwide, identified a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to its Student Information System (SIS) through the PowerSource customer support portal. The breach, which occurred between December 19 and December 24, 2024, allowed threat actors to exfiltrate sensitive data, including names, addresses, dates of birth, … [Read more...]
AT&T To Start Crediting Customers For Internet Outages, Long Wait Times
DALLAS, TX - AT&T has introduced the "AT&T Guarantee," a program that compensates customers for service disruptions. Fiber internet users experiencing outages of 20 minutes or more, and wireless customers facing disruptions of 60 minutes or more affecting at least 10 towers, will automatically receive a full day's service credit. Additionally, customers placed on hold for over five minutes when contacting technical support will receive a $5 Visa gift card. This … [Read more...]
Shopify Snaps Up Pair of Country Code Top Level Domains for Over $500,000
OTTAWA, CA - Shopify Inc., Canada's leading technology company, has acquired the domain names Shop.ca and Shop.us from Toronto-based EMERGE Commerce Ltd. for approximately $500,000. These domains now redirect to Shopify's Shop App website, a marketplace designed as a "digital shopping assistant" that allows users to search for products and brands, make purchases, and track shipments. The original Shop.ca launched in 2011, positioning itself as "Canada’s largest online … [Read more...]
Namecheap Publishes Results Naming Highest TLD, Domain Registrations for 2024
PHOENIX, AZ - One of the most well-known domain registrars in the world, Namecheap, has released the results of a study outlining the highest number of domains registered through its service in the Top-Level Domain (TLD) as well as National Domain categories for the year 2024. Namecheap’s report notes that the most popular TLD registered with the company in 2024, unsurprisingly, was .COM, which took a commanding lead with 3,661,899 registrations. The number two slot ended … [Read more...]
Senator Elizabeth Warren Calls for Antitrust Investigation into Domain Registrar Verisign
WASHINGON, D.C. - Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is claiming that internet domain registrar Verisign is a “monopoly” and is subsequently demanding that an antitrust investigation be carried out against the company. Working in conjunction with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Warren sent a letter last week to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that accuses the top-level domain (TLD) market of being tightly controlled by Verisign, whom she claims … [Read more...]
Chat.com Purchased by Artificial Intelligence Company OpenAI for Over $15 Million
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - It was revealed this week that “chat.com” was purchased by San Francisco, California-based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization OpenAI for over $15 million, marking the third time the domain has changed hands in just two years. HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah originally purchased Chat.com last year for $15.5 million; he then flipped it for an unspecified amount reported to be “well over $15 million” – with the entrepreneur writing at the … [Read more...]
Amazon Seizes Domains Used by Russian Hackers Targeting Windows Users
SEATTLE, WA - Online shopping retail giant Amazon this week seized multiple internet domains that have been utilized by Russian hackers to launch phishing attacks that targeted users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Chief Information Security Officer at Amazon, CJ Moses, announced in a blog post that Midnight Blizzard, otherwise known as APT29 – a threat actor directly sponsored by the Russian government – had been targeting government agencies, empires, … [Read more...]
Senator Demands Domain Registrars Address Russian Influence Operations During 2024 Election
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has issued a demand to several of the top American internet domain registrars to clamp down on the abuse of their services by Russian disinformation actors who he alleged are attempting to interfere with and influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Warner sent a letter earlier in October to several well-known companies in the web domain registering and hosting … [Read more...]
GoDaddy or Namecheap: Which Registrar Should You Use to Buy an .AI Domain?
PHOENIX, AZ - With the boom of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution the talk of the technology industry – both for good and bad – the demand for the .AI domain has skyrocketed. Originally an obscure country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the small Caribbean island of Anguilla, it has spiked in popularity with tech companies looking to cash in on the AI craze, making it one of the most popular extensions out there currently. That being said, the US-based GoDaddy … [Read more...]
Threads.com Acquired by Facebook Parent Meta; Expected to Redirect Soon
MENLO PARK, CA - Meta, the parent company of Facebook (which changed its corporate name in October 2021 to align with its vision for the "metaverse"), has acquired the domain "Threads.com" for its X (formerly Twitter) competitor, Threads. Originally, Meta launched the service using the domain "Threads.net" due to the prior ownership of Threads.com by another company, which was running a cloud-based team communications platform. In June 2024, the company that owned … [Read more...]
Domain Names as Digital Real Estate: The Parallels of Scarcity and Value
PALM BEACH, FL - In the modern business landscape, owning a premium domain name can be as valuable as holding a prime piece of physical real estate. Just as with prime properties in desirable locations, premium domain names—short, memorable, and industry-specific web addresses—are in limited supply, which drives up their value over time. These digital assets, much like their physical counterparts, are scarce commodities, and their importance has only increased in an era where … [Read more...]
Growing Scarcity of Geographic Domain Names: A Look at U.S. State Domains
PALM BEACH, FL - The internet landscape has undergone rapid transformation since the early days of the web (1990s), and one of the most valuable assets to emerge during this time is domain names. As businesses, organizations, and individuals rushed to stake their claims online, certain categories of domain names have become increasingly scarce, with geographic domains—particularly those tied to U.S. cities and states—standing out as prime real estate. Owning a domain like … [Read more...]
56% Increase In Disaster Recovery Events Related To Microsoft 365 Domains
REDMOND, WA - According to new data released by IT services data protection and security company N-able, 2024 so far has seen a huge uptick in hacking and cyberattacks targeting Microsoft 365 domains, with a 56 percent increase in the number of disaster recovery events among the service’s clients and a large uptick in the number of backups among its partners. Critical Start’s Cyber Research Unit (CRU) issued a report that states the number of cyber alerts in the first … [Read more...]