Beware of .eu domain scammers, report warns

According to a new survey from domain name firm Hostway http://hostway.co.uk, nearly two thirds of businesses (64%) feel that the new domain name will be important to their business operations in Europe.

The majority of respondents (60%) believed that customers will eventually use .eu rather than .com when looking for companies based in the European Union.

The new domain name is intended for residents and organisations within the European Community, and registration opens later this year.

The .eu domain name is available to all of the twenty five nations, and 450 million people that make up the European community.

Hostway conducted the survey with 200 of its business customers. The firm is opening pre-registration for .eu immediately, allowing people to sign up for their specific domain name before the official registration period opens.

Paul Halfpenny, product manager, Hostway, said: “People do need to beware of unofficial vendors offering pre-registrations as they could miss out, or be ripped off.

“This is a great opportunity for people to establish their presence as a pan-European entity, but as with any transaction online, people need to make sure that the supplier on the other end is authentic.”

A separate survey of 200 consumers showed that one in two people preferred to navigate to a region-specific website such as a .co.uk rather than to other domain names such as .info or .biz.

Furthermore, 70% of respondents associated .com websites with US content. The same 70% of respondents said that they hoped a .eu site would have content more relevant to them.

The .eu name is not intended to replace existing country-specific names, but rather to complement them and to help companies establish a pan-European presence on the web.

Entities with a valid stake to a domain name will be dealt with first with all other registrations going through in early 2006.