This August the number of domains registered in the .CLUB registry went up by 200,000 after a promotion by Chinese registrar AliBaba who announced a special price for a one-year registration: CNY 3 ($0.44). The sharp increase certainly pleased the registry but unpleasant consequences followed.
Domain Incite reports, quoting spam tracker SpamHaus, that during the AliBaba promotion, the number of .CLUB domains used to distribute spam was 17.9 percent of the total number of domains. As of today, this percent grew to 35.4 percent, or almost doubled. Of course it would be inaccurate to assume that only spammers used the promotion to acquire domains, but there is no point in denying connection between the two events.
