David Curtin the Chief Executive of the .IE domain name
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What are the risks of impulse buying during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. We're almost at Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but will you be buying any gifts directly from the likes of Facebook or TikTok this year? Half of us tend to buy on impulse around Christmas, but is there any risk in doing so? My next guest thinks it's safer to buy directly from a registered domain such as .com, but especially .ie. David Curtin is the chief executive of .ie and is sitting in front of me. Good morning, David. Good morning, Joe. How many people are registered with .ie these days? We have 330,000 .ie domain names now.
That's a lot, given a population of 5 million and maybe 3 million adults. That's right. We have about 63 domains per 100,000 of population. So we're the same as France and Italy, approximately. Nowhere near the UK.
Nowhere near the UK.
How many .ie domain names are currently registered?
Okay. And they, of course, have got .co.uk as well. That's right, yes. As well, they also have .gov.uk and all that. Exactly. Now, is it safer, would you say, to buy from a registered domain than directly from a social media platform?
It is, and there's three main reasons. So whenever there's an application for a .ie domain name, we check out the identity of the person or the company that's making the application. Do they have to give a passport or prove who they are? They're proving their identity, and they're also showing that they have a connection to Ireland. But secondly, post-registration. So we monitor for phishing exploits, and if it's found... Fishing with a PH, obviously. With a PH, yes. So malware and so on online.
Why is buying from a registered domain safer than from social media?
But if that's found, then we notify the business owner, but we also notify their hosting provider so they can take action. And then the third thing we do is we have protocols in place with the regulators. So if they're responsible for consumer protection, they can notify us.
So is that Commission de Man or is that the Appeal Centre Europe?
It's mainly CCPC, it's the Central Bank, believe it or not, it's Comreg and the Medicines Board, it's HPRA. If someone is selling pharmaceuticals online that they shouldn't be? Or if there's loan sharks that are not authorised, I shouldn't call them loan sharks, but if they're not authorised by the Central Bank.
If they're selling financial services then they're not registered for it?
So the regulators have a protocol with us. They can ask for the domain to be suspended or ultimately the domain to be deleted. But most times we're able to resolve it because somebody might have an inadvertent non-compliance with, say, the medicine's regulations. But if they remove that particular medicine from their website... then HIPAA doesn't have an issue with that. But the important point is that, you know, with those kind of rules and controls, we're able to make the .ie namespace. It's safer for consumers when they're shopping, but it's also more secure for businesses who have their .ie.
What verification processes are in place for .ie domain registrations?
The implication of what you're saying is that you way more than kick the tires when it comes to these issues, whereas social media platforms may only just kick the tires, if even that.
Yeah.
That's true. I think we know the issues on social media where, you know, there's no requirement to prove identity when you set up an account on social media.
So you don't have to upload any pictures of passports or prove where you live even?
Correct, yeah. And in fact, to advertise on the social media platforms, which, to be honest, is where a lot of the problems come from, those ads are directing people to websites which are either fake websites or perhaps they're drop-shopping websites. So they could be cloned websites. The front page of it could look real. Yes, and the fakes are getting very realistic now. And that's why we say consumers have to be really, really careful. And our survey today shows that there's a surprising level of maturity, I think, emerging. And the majority of consumers are aware of the top things to do. But there's a very significant minority still that have those behaviors that, you know, land them in trouble.
And unfortunately, one in five of the survey of a thousand people said that over 200 of them have already been scammed.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What are the risks of impulse buying during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
0:01–0:55
2
How many .ie domain names are currently registered?
0:55–1:36
3
Why is buying from a registered domain safer than from social media?
1:36–2:46
4
What verification processes are in place for .ie domain registrations?
2:46–4:03
5
How do regulators interact with .ie domains for consumer protection?
4:03–5:03
6
What are the common scams consumers should be aware of?
5:03–5:41
7
How can consumers ensure safe online shopping practices?
5:41–6:32