When we initially launched .icu in May of 2018, it was a brand new domain extension. We acquired it from the registry that had initially applied for .icu in ICANN’s first found of new domain extensions, and there was one domain in the zone, nic.icu. One year later, we have grown to over 800k domains under management, 295k of which have SSL certificates installed and nearly 100k have MX records attached. Any registry knows that while there are some great use cases in an extension there are also bad actors that do malicious things on the internet and they need domains to do that. Nearly every extension has had its fair share of abusive domains, and .icu is no stranger. We have a zero tolerance policy towards abuse, and while that does work, the challenge is often in identifying the issue. It is similar to playing a game of ‘Wack-a-Mole.’ When you discover a potential problematic domain and then take action, a few others pop up in its place. Our goal is to have a proactive approach when identifying potential or actual abuse and to take corrective measures quickly and accurately.

A few important things to know about abusive domains:

1. Technically speaking the registrar has a relationship and an agreement with the registrant. While the .icu registry does ultimately control and have the final decision to suspend a domain, it is standard practice for the registry to refer any complaints to the registrar to give them a chance to reach out to the registrant and remedy the situation.
2. Not all abusive names are abusive. Recently we had a case where someone registered a .icu domain, we flagged it as a potentially abusive domain and subsequently suspended it for sending a large number of emails that appeared to be spam. The registrant reached out to .icu and the registrar to let us know that they had a legitimate business and had misconfigured their mail server settings which caused some issues. This case was a great example of a false positive. The name was promptly restored once the situation was explained and the incorrect settings were changed.
3. Not all reporting services are the same. There are quite a few publicly available tools that can be used to check a domain for malware, phishing, spam, etc. We have found that not all these services are created equal, and not all are as accurate as they seem to be. This tends to create some confusion when people are reporting issues, and when the registry or registrar are verifying issues. We have found that using a combination of services, checks, and other tools, along with a set of human eyes is the best way to be accurate.

What is abuse?

Generally speaking, any time a domain is sending SPAM emails, impersonating another site to get your login info, trying to spread malware or anything similar is considered abuse. It is tricky sometimes; however, because as the registry, we try not to get into the realm of being ‘content police.’ Meaning that sometimes when a website may “look” like it is doing something nefarious it could be entirely within reason. A great example of this is when it comes to adult sites. Child pornography is very clearly a violation of international law and our terms and conditions, so that is pretty clear cut, but when it comes to legal sexual activities, it is difficult to penalize one site over another because they are all catering to an audience and we aren’t here to get into the details like that. The main takeaway here is that when a name contains content or is involved in activities that we determine violate our terms and conditions, we will first refer the domain to the registrar where it is registered. Giving the Registrar time to reach the registrant and try to remedy the situation, and if that does not fix the issue, we may suspend the domain. When a domain is suspended, it is not deleted from the zone. It is put on a server hold so that none of the registrant’s DNS information can resolve. If they reach out to either the registrar or the registry notifying us that the issue has been resolved, we will investigate and could reactivate the domain.

How does .icu handle abuse?

The .icu Abuse Tool is actively patrolling the streets of the .icu namespace. While I’m not going to give any specifics, it is a secret recipe; I can tell you that it is designed to be semi-automated, is continually scanning the zone and uses a tiered escalation system to reduce false positives. Every domain in the .icu zone is examined on a schedule that our machine learning determines is necessary. Once a domain is determined to be safe, its next scan may be delayed to save computer resources and API calls. If a domain is thought to be risky it may move up the ladder for some more intense scanning and once we determine that a name is genuinely violating our terms and conditions we will follow the usual process of notifying the registrar, giving them time to work with the registrant and then taking action if we are not satisfied with the outcome.

What you should know:

1. If you are receiving spam from a .icu domain, come across a phishing site or other potentially malicious .icu domain report it to us by visiting www.nic.icu/reportabuse. We monitor these messages continuously, and that page feeds directly into our abuse tool so even if we don’t get to a report for a few hours our system picks up what is submitted there and will escalate the domain into a higher priority so that we can get it on our radar quickly.
2. When folks report abusive domains, they often think there will be an instant response. Or that the domain will be instantly suspended. I can tell you with certainty that outside of legal notice from a Law Enforcement Agency, or us being able to very clearly determine, at our sole discretion, that a domain is in violation we will not be making any instant decisions. An example here would be for Child Pornography. Some services can quickly identify whether or not the content is illegal, some organizations protect the rights of children that work to notify registries, and if we receive a report of Child Pornography on a .icu domain, we take it very seriously and will likely be taking swift and decisive action.
3. When we receive a report from the general public, we will always handle it appropriately, but we may not communicate with the person that sent in the report. This could be because of privacy laws, time and resource constraints, or many other reasons. However, it is essential to know that all reports are taken seriously and handled appropriately.

In closing, .icu is a domain extension like all of the rest. We have tons of great domains under management, and with a high volume of registrations will come a small amount of abuse. We aren’t here to judge the content on a domain, unless it is illegal, speculate on why someone would register a particular string and what they could do with it or make any other qualitative assumptions about the usage of a domain. We are here to maintain a healthy and growing namespace for .icu and take necessary action when appropriate.

Lars Jensen and Kevin Kopas at the .icu Launch Party during the ICANN GDD event in Vancouver, May 2018

.icu has now been live and available for end-user registration for 90 days. And we have some milestones to talk about!

1. 64,000 Registrations – We now have over 64k registrations! This equates to more than 700 domains registered every day! We have set up www.InTheWild.icu for you to see how people are using these names. There are so many use cases for .icu domains and it is easy to see that the openness and accessibility of the extension are paying off. We love watching registrations come in to see what new and creative ideas people have for .icu domains.
   Chart by Visualizer
2. 50th Largest New Domain Extension – .icu is now the 50th largest domain extension on the planet! Sure there are older extensions that have millions of registrations however given the fact that .icu is just three months old this is a huge achievement! We check the site www.namestat.org which analyzes new create data for all registries and ranks them based on daily and overall numbers. Putting this number in perspective; there are over 1000 new domain extensions (not counting country code and legacy extensions).
3. 82 Countries – .icu has registrations in 82 countries. We have always said that .icu is language agnostic making it the perfect global domain. People around the planet are noticing .icu, shorthand for I See You, and they get it. Folks are registering .icu because they like that it is short, accessible, and global.
4. Live Sites – One of the most important metrics when evaluating a new domain extension’s success is the number of live sites or end users that have actually built something on their domain. 
   1. Key categories where we are seeing development:
      1. Cryptocurrencies – There are quite a few crypto blogs, news sites, and pricing platforms already launched. There is even a new crypto coin that is using a .icu name at www.lumo.icu. Additionally, there are blockchain startups starting use our extension, one is Vestige.icu, which is using blockchain to improve food traceability. To see more live .icu cryptocurrency sites visit
      2. Personal Sites – People are consolidating their social media profiles, building personal and professional profiles and showing off their talents with .icu names. Great examples of personal sites can be found at link.icu/HOdg8
      3. Internet Tools – One of our initial plans was to create a link shorter using a .icu name because of how short it is, recently an end user launched www.link.icu and we are using that for all of our links now! See more internet tools developed on .icu domains at link.icu/YL40C
   2. Another great indicator of live sites is the Alexa ranking. Amazon maintains a list of the top million sites in the world and right now there are 99 .icu domains on that list. That may seem like a small number but it puts .icu in the 92^nd percentile of all other domain extensions with Alexa ranked sites.
5. Trademark Clearing House Claims Period Ends – TMCH is a system mandated by ICANN that makes trademark holders aware when someone else registers a domain that contains one of their trademarks. For the first 90 days of a domain extensions launch registrars are required to notify the registrant that they are registering a domain and then notify the trademark holder that the name has been registered. It is important to note that this does not take any ownership away from the registrant if they maliciously register a trademarked term but more to notify the registrant that it could be an issue. As of 90 days this notification requirement is gone. If registrants register trademarked names they may still be open to legal repercussions however with the notification requirement gone it makes it a little easier to register names. For more info about TMCH visit ICANN’s page or the official TMCH site.
   1. An example of this? As the .icu registry we use the domain www.now.icu, this was a name that we needed for registry use. When we registered it through RRP Proxy the trademark owner was notified that we registered it. We aren’t using it in an infringing manner so are able to continue owning it.

We are excited that all of the above had been achieved in just 90 days of launch and we can’t wait to see where the next 90 days and beyond take us. In the next few months, you can find the .icu team at a few international events. We will be at Merge (Orlando, Florida), Cloud Data Expo (Singapore), and ICANN (Barcelona). If you are interested In learning more about .icu please reach out to us at sales[at]nic.icu and we would be more than happy to introduce you to the extension, go over our plans and see how we can work together.

Thanks for your support!

.icu Team

All stats, references, and links were accurate at the time of publishing.

The .icu registry is happy to announce that domain investors can now list their names for sale using the globally recognized Sedo sales platform. Sedo is a global leader for aftermarket domain sales.

While we hope to see usage on the .icu domain extension, it is also important for a registry to foster a healthy aftermarket sales space. Some of our existing live sites include: WTFSkins.icu, Travel.icu, CUInThe.icu, UpInTheAir.icu. As more names are registered, they will eventually be sold on the aftermarket leading to more live websites with .icu names. The possibilities to the left of the dot are truly endless!

As investors list .icu names on Sedo we expect to begin to see aftermarket sales similar to other new top level domain extensions.

A list of their recently reported sales can be found at NameBio.com

Here is a video showing you how to list names for sale on Sedo.

For more information feel free to email the .icu registry at Sales@nic.icu or reach out to Sedo directly at www.Sedo.com!