Terence Eden: one in five newly registered gTLD domains is a scam, and .LOCKER blocklists at 72.9%
Eden's 2026-09-06 post pulls Interisle's numbers on malicious domain registration: at least 10% of new gTLD domains registered in the year later appeared on security blocklists, with the true share registered by malicious actors estimated closer to 20%. Against 85 million new gTLD registrations in 2025, 8.5 million were blocklisted by May 2025, thirteen TLDs exceeded a 50% blocklisting rate, and the worst were .LOCKER at 72.9%, .LGBT at 72.2% and .TOWN at 70.2%. Suspension rates for blocklisted domains ran only 7.4% to 16.3%, and NameCheap, Gname, Dynadot, NameSilo and GoDaddy are named as high-volume facilitators. The AI angle is a warning from an ICANN discussion that abuse gets easier as models improve, which matters directly if your agent follows links or resolves domains it was handed.
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