The hantavirus outbreak has received significant news coverage over the past week. According to various reports, the virus was linked to an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship, and several passengers became ill and some reportedly died. Apparently, others who came in contact with some sick cruise ship passengers have also become sick.
This morning, I was curious about who owned the Hantavirus.com domain name. When I visited Hantavirus.com, I saw an Afternic landing page that typically shows up after a domain name was sold on Afternic but before the buyer changes the nameservers:
I did a Whois search at DomainTools, and I saw a graphic with a link indicating the domain name is/was listed for sale for $15,999. Clicking that link brought me to the same landing page rather than to a checkout link on GoDaddy. This indicates the domain name is no longer for sale.
The Whois record shows the domain name is now registered under Whois privacy at Namecheap. The nameservers are still set to NameFind.com. A historical Whois record from last year shows Hantavirus.com was recently owned by NameFind LLC and has been owned by the company for many years. NameFind is the domain name investment portfolio business owned by GoDaddy. The prior registrant was Name Administration, indicating this domain name was acquired when GoDaddy acquired Frank Schilling’s companies several years ago.
GoDaddy has a policy of not reporting its domain name sales, but I would bet GoDaddy sold Hantavirus.com for $15,999 or somewhere in that ballpark.
Interestingly, the last major worldwide pandemic was Coronavirus, and GoDaddy owns Coronavirus.com.
