The pandemic is slowly receding. The world is beginning to stand on its feet again. However, it is also the time to analyse the events that accumulated into the once in a lifetime (hope so) pandemic . CSC has brought a two-year analysis into the digital world with a special emphasis on the domain names.
With the onset of the pandemic, the number of related domain names surged. The number of domain names registered in the two-year period was 478,000. That’s almost half a million! These domain names contained related keywords such as ‘Covid’, ‘Covid19’, ‘Coronavirus’ and ‘vaccine’. Many of these could be misused to spread misinformation, phishing scams and steal people’s personal information.
Even during the onset of the Omicron variant, related domain name registration was at a high. After the announcement of the variant in November 2021, 70% of Omicron related domain name were registered in the period of two week. Out of 1,194 Omicron related domain names, 832 were registered in the two week period.
The arrival of the pandemic ignited a feeling of anxiety and fear among people. Everyone resorted to the internet to gather as much information as they could. This was the ideal breeding ground for the publication of related content and hence the registration of the domain names.
You can read the complete report by CSC here.
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