aNewDomain — The Washington Post recently published an article on a domain name squatter, who specializes in buying and reselling domain names related to disease. The squatter in question owns ebola.com and wants to sell it before its value drops because he worries Ebola won’t be a big search term or name in the news too much longer.
While the squatter waits for the bids to roll in on ebola.com, it is redirected to ebola.org, where you can see links to frightening articles.
Here, he advises you to buy a book on BHT, a food supplement that is said to help with Ebola:
And, of course, he’d like you to purchase some BHT from the optimistically named Life Extension Foundation.
While you’re digging around, you can of course make a big on what he really wants to sell, the domain name ebola.com.
All this depresses me. I don’t know what is more depressing, though. Is it the fact that someone would try to exploit the Ebola epidemic this way? Or is it that people actually might shell out cash for BHT and, in doing so, help keep squatting on ebola.com and eventually other disease-based domain names a profitable business.
Sheesh. For aNewDomain, I’m Larry Press.
