Nominet suspends more than 3,000 domains

Domain name registry Nominet suspended nearly 4,000 .uk domains over a 12-month period, according to a report that outlines criminal activity online.

The report, called "Tackling online criminal activity", said that 3,889 .uk domains were suspended in the 12 months from November 2014 to October 2015.

According to Nominet there were just 948 suspensions throughout the preceding six month period.

The total represents less than 0.04% of the 10.6 million .uk domains registered.

Nominet is alerted to the domains, which are either liable for intellectual property infringement or other offences including fraud, by law enforcement agencies. It then works with registrars to suspend the domains.

According to the report, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit gave the most referrals with 3,610.

The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau alerted Nominet to 104 domains while the Medicines Healthcare Products Agency alerted it to 149.

Trading standards officers, the Metropolitan Police and the National Crime Agency also made referrals.