↓Skip to main content
Zeitgeist — a spike by Chris Gathercole
  1. Creators/
  2. Simon Willison — Creator of Datasette; co-creator of Django/

The purpose of DNS is to spread scams

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-10)

  • Simon Willison highlights Terence Eden’s alarming claim that the Domain Name System (DNS) has become a primary vector for criminals to spread scams at a “terrifyingly high rate.”
  • An Interisle report revealed that out of 85 million new gTLD registrations in 2025, 8.5 million were blocklisted by May 2025, suggesting an abuse rate likely between 10% and 20%.
  • This means “one in five newly registered domains with a gTLD are scams,” which Eden calls a “bloody crisis” that ICANN has been discussing for years.
  • The high prevalence of scam domains, especially among new gTLDs, serves as a critical warning to exercise extreme caution when encountering recently registered websites.