Will strengthen checks on registered domain names

To avoid the situation of registered domain names being misused, VNNIC Center will increase the review and inspection of licensed domain names in the coming time.

Sharing at the Conference on the first 6 months of 2013 of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Director of VNNIC Hoang Minh Cuong said that the .gov.vn domain name is still being registered and licensed in the form of pre-check. Therefore, recently, according to the reflection of localities, a situation has arisen where some enterprises deliberately use domain names similar to those of state agencies. Meanwhile, according to regulations, only Party organizations and state agencies are allowed to register to use the .gov.vn domain name.

As VietNamNet reported, the issue of the misuse of the .gov.vn domain name is becoming quite hot after the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Information and Communications discovered at least 4 websites providing illegal visa services to Vietnam through addresses ending in .gov.vn.

Specifically, these are the websites: vietnamvisa.gov.vn registered by the People's Committee of Dang Xa Commune (Gia Lam, Hanoi); visavietnam.gov.vn registered by the Statistics Office of Luc Ngan District (Bac Giang); visatovietnam.gov.vn registered by the Department of International Cooperation (Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs) and Vietnam-visa.gov.vn registered by the People's Committee of Hai Phu Commune (Hai Hau, Nam Dinh).

However, in reality, behind all four of these websites are businesses or individuals, maintaining the websites with the purpose of making money from visa services for foreigners. Some websites even illegally use images of the national flag and national emblem to make visitors mistakenly think that they are official visa websites of the Vietnamese government.

Mr. Cuong explained that the issuance of .gov.vn domain names is being carried out in accordance with the provisions of Circular 09/2008 on Guidelines for Management and Use of Internet Resources, however, the heads, deputy heads, and officials of violating agencies have used signatures, seals, or forged signatures of leaders to register domain names, serving personal purposes instead of serving the purposes of state agencies and organizations. On the other hand, there is no regulation that the Domain Name Registrar must check the .gov.vn domain name, whether the information content is consistent with the name, functions, and tasks of the agency or not. This is a loophole in the current domain name management work.

Discussing the future solutions, the representative of VNNIC said that he would ask the local Departments of Information and Communications to closely coordinate with the Center to inspect and detect violations and errors in the use of domain names. However, he recommended that the Ministry of Information and Communications consider supplementing Circular 09/2008 on the registration of domain names that must reflect the functions and tasks of the organization, avoiding the situation where the registrant is the People's Committee of the commune but the domain name is a visa issuer like the recent incident.

According to (vietnamnet.vn) - HL