Dying free-domains registry Freenom has shut down at least 12.6 million domains across three of its TLDs, according to research from Netcraft.
Netcraft’s latest web server survey shows that the domains — across .tk, .cf and .gq — no longer resolve, according to the company.
That’s 98.7% of the resolving domains Freenom had a month earlier, Netcraft said.
Freenom, also known as OpenTLD, said in February that it was to exit the domains business entirely as part of its settlement with Facebook owner Meta, which had sued it for alleged cybersquatting.
It had already lost its ICANN registrar accreditation and its government contracts to run its portfolio of ccTLDs.
The company’s business model was to offer most domains for free and then monetize them when the registrations expired or were suspended for abuse. It attracted a lot of abusive registrants.
Interestingly, Netcraft notes that the deletions meant that Cloudflare saw a 22% drop in its total hosted domains (with Cloudflare acting as host, not registrar) over the month.
The post Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report first appeared on Domain Incite.
