Is the .eu domain extension the safest choice?

It has become a lot more difficult for cybercriminals to register a .eu domain extension for their evil purposes thanks to a solution based on Artificial Intelligence. This immediately makes .eu domains much safer for users. How does this AI work?

Is your .eu domain still available?

Proactive selection thanks to Artificial Intelligence

It is unfortunate, but it appears to be very easy for crooks to get their way via the Internet. They register a domain name and then set about sending spam, distributing malware, etc. Or they use their domain name as an attack base from which to carry out other fraudulent practices such as phishing, scams, etc. If the authorities or police receive a complaint about this, they will remove such domains or blacklist them to prevent more people from becoming victims.

But by then, most of the damage has already been done. For that reason, KU Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven), in collaboration with EURid, the registrar for the .eu domain extension, has devised a solution that works on a proactive basis. APEWS (short for Abuse Prevention and Early Warning System) is based on machine learning algorithms that were unleashed on the blacklists of known fraudulent domains.

AI tool checks .eu domains immediately on registration

The result is a scoring model that is applied as soon as a domain name with a .eu extension is registered, and this works sufficiently accurately. In 75% of the cases where the system considered a domain name suspicious, that suspicion was indeed confirmed by indicators from third parties that refer to misuse. Since APEWS was put into service in January 2018, it has correctly identified no less than 60,000 .eu domain names as having been registered with bad intentions. And from now on, each .eu domain name that gets too low a score on registration will be automatically removed before it becomes active.

This strict control has a double effect. Not only does it scare off the cybercriminals who now know that they will not be able to use a .eu domain for their evil practices so easily, but it also results in the confidence of Internet users in the .eu domain name being given a huge boost!

A .eu domain: is it something you too might want?

The .eu top-level domain has a special place in the domain market. Although it is not a physical country, it belongs nevertheless to the country code TLDs. It is actually the domain name of the European Union, but registration of a .eu domain name is open to all individuals, organisations or businesses registered in the European Economic Area (i.e. the Member States of the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). There is, however, no obligation for the applicant to actually be located in the EEA.

The TLD is managed by EURid, a non-profit organisation that was set up by the European Commission as the Registry for all .eu domains. It is worth noting here that the .eu ccTLD is also an IDN (Internationalised Domain Name). In other words, it can also contain non-ASCII characters, which means you can also register a domain name in Cyrillic .ею or Greek .ευ.

The .eu domain extension has become even safer: AI-based, proactive checks help block hackers!

Since their launch in 2005, almost 4 million .eu domains have been registered. There are a good many reasons why an increasing number of individuals, businesses and organisations are opting for a .eu domain.

Benefit from users’ enhanced confidence in the .eu domain space and register your domain name with a .eu domain extension now. Do you already have a .be or another main domain? Think about the future and go European with your .eu domain.

Check the availability of your .eu domain