The failure of Nigeria’s major companies to purchase .ng domain names may lead to increased activity by cybercriminals exploiting the unclaimed location-based domains, according to expert Chris Chibuike.
Speaking to HumanIPO, social media expert Chibuike pointed to the major telecoms players as examples of those ignoring the available .ng domains; with MTN so far the only operator to register and redirect MTN.ng to the mtnonline.com website.
“The implication of this is cybercriminals may purchase the domain and put up a cloned website misleading subscribers or stealing sensitive data from them,” Chibuike told HumanIPO.
In addition to the telecoms sector, reluctance to migrate to .ng domains has been observed in the banking sector and several others, in part due to the cost of changing domains, according to Ope Odusan, managing director of Africa.com and former chief operating officer (COO) of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA).
“When I was in NiRA as chief operating officer, I met with some banks on this issue. They were complaining of huge cost outlay involved in changing those items to reflect their new website, which is in several millions of naira, as a major factor,” Odusan told HumanIPO recently.
“If you look at the few banks that have changed to .ng, when you log in on .ng it will redirect you to their .com website which does not make sense,” Odusan said.
Opeyemi Awoyemi, co-founder of WhoGoHost, a gold certified NiRA accredited domain registrar, also told HumanIPO the high cost of the .ng domain names is the main reason why many Nigerians are discouraged from registering .ng domains.
Awoyemi said he expects the price of .ng domains to remain high at least until the end of 2015.
“I see the price coming down but it’s not something that is going to necessarily happen in the next one to two years, it might take a while,” he told HumanIPO.
“The price cannot go down anytime soon, but over time we are going to think about bringing the price down,” he said.
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