Abstract
This ADAM Report looks into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on .cz top-level domain. The dynamics of daily domain registrations during the onset of the pandemic are analysed for all second-level domains and then separately for domains that are presumably related to the pandemic (based on their name). Web contents of COVID-related domains are classified into four basic categories, and their popularity ranking in terms of the DNS Magnitude index is also presented.In the current situation of global emergency due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the Internet has become one of the crucial factors that keep the society going. Most schools as well as many businesses and institutions switched to a remote mode of their operation. We also observe a big wave of solidarity – people help others by providing information, making and distributing face masks and other sanitary items, or raise funds. Alas, some individuals also try to misuse the difficult and fearful circumstances for their own profit. Most of these activities take place, at least partly, in the cyberspace.
This report looks into the quantitative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the .cz registry and DNS domain. We provide statistics of coronavirus-related domain registrations and DNS traffic, and a basic classification of web pages connected to second-level domains under .cz.
We investigated .cz domain names registered after 1 January
2020. A domain name is considered to be related to COVID-19 if it
contains one of the following words/stems: corona,
korona, virus, rousk,
respirator, epidem, dezinfekc,
karanten, covid, pandem,
ffp2, ffp3. Of course, this approach is not
bullet-proof – we may have caught a few false positives, but also fail
to include COVID-19-related domains that either use non-matching names
or utilize domains deeper in the DNS tree. A more precise classification
would require a detailed analysis of the contents of corresponding web
pages.
The following graph shows the daily counts of COVID-19-related domain registrations (top) compared to all domain registrations (bottom). In the latter graph, the increase in total figures since 9 March is quite evident.
The very first .cz domain clearly related to COVID-19 was, not surprisingly, koronavirus.cz, registered on 23 January 2020. In total, 1209 COVID-19-related domains were registered between 1 January and 31 March.
The next graph presents cumulative numbers of COVID-19-related domain registrations in the context of three important dates, namely of the disease outbreak in Czechia and the subsequent governmental measures. It is interesting to notice that more than a hundred such domains were registered even before the outbreak. A rapid increase can be observed since 10 March, when the authorities announced the school lock-down.
We also tried to roughly classify the web pages connected to each of the COVID-19-related domains. To do so, we downloaded screenshots of these web pages (it they exist), and performed a simple automatic classification on them. The following graph shows the sizes of four main categories.
The “Default page” category means web pages that display default contents provided by web hosting companies. Such domains and web sites are either registered but not yet configured, or the so-called parked domains, i.e. speculative registrations made with the aim of selling the domain name later.
Among the web sites that really exist we found many pages related to non-profit initiatives that coordinate sewing and/or sharing or face masks, as well as other supportive activities. We also observed a considerable number of web shops hosted under COVID-19 domains. Several cases of allegedly abusive web shops have already been reported in the news. An interesting topic for further investigation is to apply machine learning for detecting such fake businesses automatically.
By 31 March 2020, COVID-19 has caused approximately 0.09% increase in the number of domain names registered under .cz. There were days when COVID-19 domain registrations constituted around 15–20% of total daily registrations.
It is worth noting that such temporary surges of domain registrations and DNS traffic are not unique to the current situation. Similar things, perhaps on a smaller scale, accompany most nation-wide or global events and phenomena, such as Olympic games or economic crises.
In the long term, it remains to be seen how the domain business will evolve in the future. On the one hand, domain registrations in general reflect the overall economic situation, which can be expected to seriously suffer from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in the following months. On the other hand, the pandemic will most likely increase the demand for making our civilization even more digital, which may again result in new domain registrations.
In order to mitigate the short term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on .cz domain holders, CZ.NIC has recently relaxed the terms for domain registration renewals (announcement).