After these organisations allowed domain names to expire,
usually when they decided to use an alternative name, they
discovered their old domain names pointing to porn sites. The porn
sites profit through advertising revenue which increases in
proportion to the traffic they generate.
For the porn sites, they have control of domain names to which
several other sites already link, albeit the sites are unaware that
they are now sending users to view porn. This provides the porn
sites with both direct traffic from unsuspecting users clicking
these links, and with rankings on some search engines. Among the
domain names now pointing to porn are those formerly used by the
International Lutheran Woman’s Missionary League and the Ohio State
Senate. Often, the names taken are those not containing trade mark
rights which make them difficult for the original owners to
recover.
In response to the problem, internet filtering company N2H2 is
promoting a system which scans the internet, identifying web sites
that previously contained innocent content but now contain
porn.
When these new “stealth porn sites” are identified, N2H2's
customers can have the sites blocked by filter software. According
to the company, its scanning system adds more than 3,000 new porn
sites each week to its database, “a number of which pop-up on the
internet under rather innocent domain names.”
According to Snapnames, a company which deals in expired names,
approximately one million domain name registrations lapse each
month. Most get purchased very soon after becoming available.
