Malaysian Airlines Crash Domain Names Already Being Registered

Unsurprisingly, it looks like domain names related to the Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 plane crash are being hand registered today as the news of the tragedy continues to unfold.  Verisign shares data related to .com domain name registrations in its DomainView Grapher Tool, and that can give us a look at what is being registered.

According to the Grapher Tool, here are some of the domain names that have been registered today:

  • flightmh17.com
  • malaysiaflightmh17.com
  • prayformh17.com
  • malaysiamh17.com
  • mh17crash.com
  • mh17disaster.com
  • flight-mh17.com
  • mh17flight.com
  • moviemh17.com
  • malaysianflightmh17.com
  • malaysianairlinesflightmh17.com
  • mh17movie.com
  • mh17news.com
  • mh17planecrash.com

My opinion is that profiting off of a tragedy like this is in poor taste, so let’s hope we don’t see any Malaysian Airlines related domain names up for sale. Obviously, we need to keep in mind that some (or many or all) of these domain names may have been registered with good intentions.

I think people need to be cautious about registering domain names related to a tragedy, even if the intentions are good. I would not be surprised to see mainstream media writing about domain names related to the tragedy. Personally, I would not want my name to be associated with registering domain names related to a tragic event.

My prayers go out to the families.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

17 COMMENTS

  1. Tragedy is not to making profit – the organisations must try to protect bad use of a domain in such tragedy. I agree with you – good call!

  2. Nice to see your against such registrations Elliot, I’ve always advocated against profiting off any form of tragedy, it’s not only repulsive, it severely harms our industry, Registrations and the publicity from it reaffirms the unfavorable perception many people have about domainers, the bad acts of few hurt ALL of us.

    When I argued against such registrations, many domainers actually defended them, citing “the news media profits from tragedies so why cant we? idiotic justification… Even when a celebrity dies they do the same by registering and posting them on ebay and the forums, like the unfortunate passing of Whitney Houston, I still have the screen capture of that where a mod actually defended the sale thread, incredible.

    • Yes, I am against it.

      Posting this was a double-edged sword though. I don’t like drawing attention to the practice, but on the other hand, I want people to see that it’s not a good thing to do.

    • Drawing attention to it does far more good than harm IMO.. We as domainers need to expose the practice for what it is, IMO tragedy squatting is worse than cybersquatting, it’s almost like ambulance chasing, attending a funeral of someone you don’t know solely for profit, only a scum bag does something like that, and we unfortunately have plenty of of them in our industry.

      After the V-Tech shooting happened, many were selling tragedy domains on Ebay, I must have reported over 2 dozen auctions to ebay and they closed everyone of them down, the domain industry needs to do the same, close each and every sale thread down so they have no place to go, and denounce the practice at the same time.

  3. Some I can understand if it was the airlines just protecting the domains from others, but I don’t think that mh17movie.com was registered with anything but thought of profiting on it if a movie about the crash is ever made.

    This is just like those facebook pages that get tons of likes and shares with sympathy posts and then are sold to advertisers.

  4. Personally I wouldn’t have anything to do with registering a name related to such a tragedy.

    Unfortunately the news media has fed the public a steady diet of this type of news and as a result people seem to crave the sensationalism of these tragic stories.

    Do the world a favour tonight and turn off the news stations that are bent on capitalizing on these tragedies. If we are going to criticize domainers we should not be hypocritical, by watching the news stations that make huge money from the exploitation of human suffering and tragedy.

    Remember 911, was it really necessary to play the loop of planes crashing into the twin towers and the resulting building collapse over and over. My wife ended up turning the television off for two days to minimize the unfiltered sensationalism that the children were being exposed to.

    Robin Jilderda

  5. Reading Robins post, do you see what I mean Elliot? Let’s validate bad behavior with other bad behavior, not that reporting the NEWS is bad behavior, however I would agree that over playing tragic events can be.

    “Do the world a favour tonight and turn off the news stations that are bent on capitalizing on these tragedies. If we are going to criticize domainers we should not be hypocritical, by watching the news stations that make huge money from the exploitation of human suffering and tragedy.

    First day of the event and your asking viewers to turn it off, are you for real? I suppose in your mind the media shouldn’t report on such tragedies at all, instead they should report on more social matters like finding that deep connection with your soul mate, or reporting on Justin Beibers recent arrest, or Selena Gomez Gets a New Tattoo, what does it mean? inquiry minds want to know.. Does the media not profit on stories like these as well? or is it only for tragedies?

    • Raider
      I would never support censoring the media, I can only personally choose what I want to consume. The point I was trying to make was not based on what the media reports, more so in the manner that the story is presented. I believe that the news organizations have the ability to report on these tragic stories in a manner that respects the dignity of the victims and not to sensationalize a horrible loss of life.

      Robin Jilderda

    • This we can agree on, but this is far from what you presented in your first post, where you make the point that both domainers and the news media “capitalize” on tragedies, and therefore we shouldn’t be hypocritical, which is a twisted way of thinking, Sure you can say the media is “capitalizing” on this tragedy, but are they “capitalizing” in the same way as the tragedy squatter? Isn’t the PRIMARY function of the news media to provide a public service, informing the world of currents events as they unfold? what does the Tragedy squatter PRIMARILY do? other than try to profit from a horrific event in hopes of fullfilling their dream of becoming rich?

  6. Just saw an article in the Australian Paper – The Age on titled, “Insurance firm buys MH17 Google keywords to promote life insurance”.

    • How anyone could even think of doing something like this is disturbing, were there not 27 Australins aboard that flight? The insurance company later apologized and stated this was done by a overseas marketing company, which was likely the case, but the damage is already done when you consider the number of polices that are dropped or don’t renew.

      I’m even repulsed by merchants who use Memorial day as way to market their products, Do they not understand this a day of remembrance for those who died serving our country or are they so desperate to increase their sales that they don’t care what the meaning is?, these are merchants I will never buy from.

  7. It is ironic that domainers, most of whom are idiots and unethical beyond all normal business expectations, are often the same ones who yap nonstop about people who register domain names connected to disasters. You are the same moron domainers who turn on the television, or read news online from organizations that are selling advertising, who are talking about the same tragedies.

    I always thought that you piece of garbage domainers were so pathetic when you start these threads after every tragedy. It is the same tune every time. You talk about how horrible people are to profit from the tragedy, yet every news group in the world, every blog, every political organization in the world, tries to profit from every tragedy, and you stupid asses are too dense to realize it.

    And that is why none of you get any respect, and even the biggest names in domaining turned out to be the most disgraceful shills of loser names the world has ever seen.

    • To say the news media profits from tragedies is no different than saying the news profits from sports or the weather or finance, of course they profit, they profit from the time the newscast begins to the time the newscast ends, it’s not like they only profit from tragic events, their journalists, they report the news.

      Elliot profits much the same way, he reports and offers insight pertaining to domaining, If the news media or bloggers like him were offering to sell coffee mugs or t-shirts of the tragedy, the same way scum bag domainers offer to sell tragedy domains like this one; http://www.ebay.com/itm/Airplane-Crash-Attorney-com-Cabin-Pressure-Injury-Malaysia-Attorney-Domain-URL-/400683887945?pt=Domain_Names&hash=item5d4a9eed49

      then you would have a valid point, of course that would never happen, only a douche would do something like that, and only a douche would try to justify repulsive behavior, like a Pedophile trying to justify molesting a child, all it takes is a creative and twisted mind from someone who refuses to accept responsibility, someone who fools himself into believing that what he did was just.

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