By 
An unknown party has bought a prominent Government website for £40,000 after a blunder allowed ownership of the Help to Buy domain name to lapse, leading to fears its new owner could have fraudulent plans.
Homes England, a governmental body, admitted that an “administration error” had allowed ownership of the Helptobuy.org.uk website to expire. It was then bought by a third party and sold on for more than £40,000 at auction.
Experts fear that spammers could now use the domain name for nefarious purposes. One said it would have cost Homes England less than £4 a year to renew the website address and keep it in safe hands.
The Help to Buy scheme was launched by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in 2013 to help first-time buyers and others get on to the property ladder. Its official website was located at Helptobuy.org.uk but several years later was later moved to Helptobuy.gov.uk, with the former domain redirecting viewers to the correct website.
However, Homes England let the org.uk address expire earlier this month. Since then, it has been purchased by a third party and auctioned, where it sold for £40,251.
No information is available about who has purchased the new domain, beyond the fact it is now hosted on servers in the Republic of Ireland.
Paul Bischoff of Comparitech.com, an online privacy expert, said the domain name could be exploited by fraudsters looking to capitalise on the brand value of the Help to Buy website.
“Allowing a domain to expire can allow a malicious party to buy the domain,” he said. “If the original website was trusted, it could be used to phish website visitors, spread malware and send spam.”
According to DomainLore, which auctioned the site name, 15,750 websites link to the Helptobuy.org.uk address, including other government pages and national newspaper websites.
Following Telegraph Money’s intervention, Homes England was forced to update official guides which still directed users to the .org.uk domain.
Homes England said it would monitor the activity taking place on its former domain but did not say whether it would attempt to re-acquire the website.
However, Mr Bischoff said that buying the website could be an expensive solution. “If you want to get an expired domain back, it’s going to cost a lot more than if you had just renewed it,” he said.
Nick Wenban Smith of Nominet, the registrar for .uk domain names, said that before it expired the domain could have been renewed by the Government for as little as £3.90 a year.
“We’d generally advise to err on the side of caution when letting domains which have had a high profile and traffic and/or brand investment expire,” he said. “But that is mainly from a brand and reputation protection viewpoint.”
Buying expired domain names and auctioning the websites can be a profitable business, however few are as valuable as former Government domains.
The Help to Buy website was worth almost 10 times the next most valuable website sold recently by DomainLore – stockings.co.uk, which sold for £4,299.
A Homes England spokesman said: “Our normal practice is to renew domain names. We are taking immediate actions to make sure all our stakeholders are aware of the official Help to Buy websites.”
According to official figures, more than 250,000 house purchases have been supported by the Help to Buy scheme, which is due to end in March 2023.
Comments