CAMTEL
 | |
| Country: | Cameroon |
| Website: | camnet.cm |
Cameroon Telecommunications, or CAMTEL, was the registry operator and sponsor organization that managed and administered the .cm ccTLD for Cameroon until 2010.[1]
Wildcarding Controversy and Typosquatting
In 2006, the .cm Registry set up a wild card DNS record for all unregistered .cm domains, in partnership with Canadian domain investor Kevin Ham. This arrangement redirected traffic on all unregistered domains to a parking page with pay-per-click ads, agoga.com. Subsequent .CM auctions generated millions of dollars in revenues.
In 2009, McAfee designated .cm as the riskiest namespace with 36.7% of .cm websites posing a security risk to web users.[2]
Reform and Redelegation Efforts
In December 2010, the government of Cameroon passed Law No. 2010/13, which among other things placed management of the .cm ccTLD in the hands of the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC).[3]. While it appears that ANTIC intended to initiate a redelegation request with IANA,[3] IANA has no record of a request.[4] CAMTEL is still listed on IANA's delegation record.[5] However, none of the contact information is valid, and camnet.cm no longer resolves.[6] The NIC.cm site run by ANTIC appears to be the operating registry.[7]
References
- ↑ African ccTLDs, DotAfrica. Retrieved 2015 September 9.
- ↑ CNET.com - McAfee Uncovers the Riskiest Domains
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Nic.cm - Support for .cm redelegation
- ↑ IANA.org - Reports
- ↑ IANA Delegation Record - .cm
- ↑ Camnet.cm, last attempted February 2021. See also Archive.org's last crawl of the site, in April 2016.
- ↑ Nic.cm