Speculators buying Virgina Tech related domains
April 20, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — A number of individuals have registered domain names related to the Virginia Tech massacre, including URLs such as vatechshooting.com and vtmurders.com, with some of the domains selling upwards of $US1 million.
Many of the domains have been registered at Go Daddy (godaddy.com) immediately following Monday’s shootings, including vatechshooting.com, vtmurders.com, vtkillings.com, vatechshooting.net, vtrampage.com and vatechmassacre.com. Several of the domains have been registered via an anonymous registrant service that conceals the name, phone number and mailing address of the person who purchased the URL.
Joseph Parker of Christiansburg, Virgnia registered vtmurders.com and vtkillings.com, both of which he posted for sale on his Web site at $250,000, reports Virginian newspaper, the Roanoke Times. Parker is also allegedly offering other domains, including choseng-hui.com — penned after the Virginia killer’s name — for $1 million.
Several Virginia Tech-related domains were up for bid on eBay late Wednesday, including a three-URL package of virginiatech2007.com, virginiatech2007.net and virginiatech2007.org, priced at $45,000. And yesterday, additional graphic domains and URLs that could potentially be used for fraud were posted on eBay, including vatechcarnage.com for $100,000 and vatechvictimsfund.com for $10,000. The online auction site has since then taken the materials off the site.
Additionally, at least one spammed Virginia Tech scam has already been found in circulation, as reported by a security company Sophos. Spam claiming to offer video of the shootings is being distibuted. However, the message’s attachment — a Windows screen-saver file entitled TERROR_EM_VIRGINIA.scr — is actually an identity-stealing Trojan designed to attain banking usernames and passwords.
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