Meta*, which owns the Facebook*, Instagram* and WhatsApp brands, has filed a lawsuit against the Freenom. This is a Dutch company, best known for managing the Tokelau ccTLD. The tiny island territory of New Zealand occupies more than an impressive place on the world domain map: the .TK domain is the largest among national domain zones: the number of registrations in it exceeds 20 million.
However, it is only formally national: anyone can register names in the .TK, and absolutely free of charge. In the same way, the Freenom also manages the ccTLDs for Equatorial Guinea (.GQ), Central African Republic (.CF), Mali (.ML) and Gabon (.GB). The company earns on domain name parking services. At the same time, the higher the traffic that a domain generates, the more income the ads placed on its page bring. From this follows a simple conclusion that potentially the company may be interested in the unfair use of domain names: domains similar to the names of popular brands attract a significant number of visitors. Of course, such domains serve for unseemly purposes like phishing, malware distribution, etc., but the registry can always say that they have no right to take on the functions of "content police".
This, of course, is only a guess, although the fact that free domains are used to the maximum extent by cybercriminals does not require any proof. But perhaps Meta's lawyers will be able to prove Freenom's involvement in illegal activities. The lawsuit accuses the registry of cybersquatting, phishing and trademark infringement, according to Domain Incite. Registrations of the names faceb00k.ga, fb-lnstagram.cf, facebook-applogin.ga, instagrams-help.cf, instaqram.ml, chat-whatsaap.gq, chat-whatsaap-com.tk and supportservice-lnstagram.cf are examples of violations in the lawsuit. In total, Meta representatives counted more than 5 thousand names that violate the rights of their company. And they intend to collect from the Freenom registry $100,000 for each such domain. Thus, the total amount of the claim exceeds $500 million.
* Meta Platforms Inc and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are recognized as extremist organizations whose activities are prohibited in Russia
