Co.CC, a South Korean web company offering free and short subdomains to personal bloggers and webmasters, has been having a lot of issues recently. First Google de-indexed the entire domain and nearly 5 million subdomains based on the root co.cc domain. Facebook subsequently banned the subdomain due to increased spam/phishing complaints. And most recently, the entire domain appears to have been shutdown with users confused as to the status of their domains and whether the company has gone completely under.
With no official communications from the company and the site completely inaccessible, users have taken to the company's Facebook page to voice their anger and conclusions on what happened.
But what really happened to Co.CC?
Looking at the domain provides the best clues as to what happened. A whois search results in the following:Domain Name : co.cc
:: Registrant, Administrative Contact, Technical Contact ::
Name : JONG SUNG, KIM
Email :
Address : 864-2, JANGHANGDONG, ILSAN, GOYANG,GYEOUNGGI
Zipcode : 410837
Nation :
Tel : +82.319196171
Fax : +82.319196150
::Name Servers::
::Dates & Status::
Created Date : 1997/10/13 00:00:00 EST
Updated Date : 2012/11/13 10:17:38 EST
Valid Date : 2020/08/18 13:15:07 EST
Status clientHold
Note the last part (Status clientHold), this is a code often used by domain registrars when they have suspended a domain for non-payment or legal reasons. Based on this, the most likely possibility is that Co.CC's growing popularity with scam artists and phishers likely did them in. With one too many reports, their registrar likely terminated their account locking Co.CC out of it's own domain.
Another possibility could be that one of the subdomains are under investigation due to an illegal act, such as copyright infringement, child pornography, hacking or hate speech/terrorism.
A more outlandish claim could be that they had failed to make payment, but the domain appears to be registered until 2020 - so it's high unlikely that the domain was suspended as a result of non-payment. The removal of the DNS servers is also a good indication that the fate of Co.cc lies in the hands of it's registrar, not Co.cc!
