The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) has released a report which found that upwards of 27 percent of congressional members domain names are used in identity squatting - the act of registering domain names containing famous names in had faith with the intention of profiteing from them.
CADNA examined six domain names corresponding to the name of each U.S. House and Representatives and Senate member (totaling 3,210 domains) and found that on average, members of Congres only own 1.86 of the six domain names examined in teh report, and 95 did not own one single domain name. Only 16 members of Congress owned all six of the domain names examined.
Some additional highlights from the report include (available here in PDF):
- 49 percent of senators and 57 percent of representatives own their FullName.com domain names; 29 percent of senators and 29 percent of representatives own their FullName.org domain names
- 49 percent of senators' FullName.com domain names and 64 percent of their FullName.org domain names are owned by third parties. 39 percent of representatives' FullName.com domain names and 32 percent of their FullName.org domain names are owned by third parties
- And my favorite little nugget from this report: 59 percent of representatives' FullNameForCongress.com and 77 percent of their FullNameForCongress.org domains are available. Let the squatting begin.
