Parked Domains are Becoming a Security Story - Not Just a Monetization Story

• Dec 17 2025
• by Joe Alagna

As an old domainer, two recent articles have caught my attention - one from Brian Krebs and one from Infoblox - both basically saying the same thing:

The parking ecosystem has quietly shifted from “harmless monetization” to “a delivery system for scams and malware.” That’s a big statement, and it has real implications for domain investors, registries, registrars, ISPs, and anyone who still believes in direct navigation.

I want to unpack what’s going on, what it means, how smart domainers can respond, and how we’re thinking about it at it.com.

Why parked domains are in the headlines again

For a long time, landing on a parked domain was mostly just a simple thing.

You’d type in a name, hit enter, and see a page of text links, a logo for a parking company, and maybe some roughly-related ads. It wasn't considered dangerous at all. In fact, many of us considered it to be a useful process for end users. I know I did.

The newer research shows that this picture is flipping.

Security teams are now seeing two very different worlds. When they visit parked domains from “clean” environments (VPNs, data center IPs, security scanners), they still see the old, familiar parking pages. But when they visit those same domains from normal residential connections - the way a regular user does - they’re quietly pushed through chains of traffic brokers and ad feeds, and they end up on fake antivirus pages, subscription scams, tech support scareware, and sometimes outright malware.

In other words, the parked page is increasingly a decoy. The real money is in selling the click into an opaque network of “direct search” and “zero-click” feeds. Once that happens, very few people in the chain are asking where the user actually lands, as long as the revenue keeps flowing.

And this isn’t just a domainer story anymore. Over time, parking has spread to registrars parking expired or soon-to-expire names, ISPs monetizing DNS errors, registries using DNS wildcards for unregistered names, and email or hosting providers turning mis-typed domains into ad inventory. When that many layers of infrastructure all start monetizing “unused” and “mistyped” traffic, abuse is almost guaranteed to follow.

Parking seems to have changed from domainer revenue into an infrastructure problem

If you’ve been around this industry a while, you remember the simple version of parking… An investor buys some nice, generic names in a popular TLD and, while waiting to sell them, parks them on a platform. The platform shows ads, shares the revenue, and everyone makes a little money off type-in traffic. It wasn’t perfect, but it was understandable and mostly transparent.

Then things evolved.

Parking moved beyond investor portfolios. Registrars started parking large pools of expired domains. ISPs turned NXDOMAIN responses into “helpful” search and ad pages. Registries in various TLDs experimented with wildcards and default parked pages for unregistered names. What started as a niche monetization tactic became baked into the internet's plumbing.

At the same time, monetization itself became more aggressive. Instead of just showing ads on the parked page, the model shifted to selling the click into layers of traffic brokers. That’s where you get “zero-click” and “direct search” models - and with each hop, transparency fades. The user has almost no idea who is really behind the final destination, and the domain owner often doesn't either.

Then the economics shifted. As ad platforms gave advertisers more ways to avoid parked and low-quality inventory, traditional page-based parking revenue took a hit. That pushed some players to find new, more aggressive ways to squeeze value out of every visitor. Not all of those ways are user-friendly, and some of them are downright dangerous.

The result is what we’re seeing now: a significant slice of the global parked domain universe - across multiple TLDs and providers - has turned into a traffic-redirect infrastructure that attackers can easily plug into. This isn’t about blaming one particular extension. It’s about recognizing that when parking becomes a default behavior across many zones and systems, the entire ecosystem starts to look like a soft target.

What this means for domains and direct navigation in general

Rather than singling out one TLD, it’s more accurate to say that any large, popular namespace with lots of undeveloped domains and heavy use of parking is going to be part of this story. Some of those zones are legacy TLDs, some are newer gTLDs, and some are country codes. The pattern is what matters.

Practically, that changes how people think about direct navigation. For years, typing a domain straight into the address bar was framed as a high-intent, almost “premium” behavior. Now, CISOs and security teams are beginning to see that same habit as something that needs to be filtered or discouraged when it leads to undeveloped or parked names. “Random domain in the bar” used to be neutral. Increasingly, it’s treated as risky.

This is sad because I believe that the ability to see a domain name is an important tool to detect and prevent fraud (for end users). I always advise people to type in bank or financial services domains rather than click links to make sure they are on a real website.

Undeveloped domains in popular TLDs also start life with a larger trust gap than they used to. A generic name sitting on a typical parking lander is more likely to be treated as “parked/suspicious” by URL categorization tools, and it’s more likely to be viewed cautiously by corporate buyers and their security teams. That doesn’t mean the name is bad. It just means it looks like the patterns that often are.

Finally, aftermarket valuations that lean heavily on parking revenue will look more fragile. If a domain’s revenue depends on these opaque click chains that are now under the microscope for abuse, buyers will discount that. Especially at the enterprise level, there’s a growing sense that any name tied too deeply into risky feeds might come with cleanup work and reputational baggage.

So the core issue isn’t that one particular zone is “bad.” The issue is that any namespace with large volumes of parked, wildcarded, or “monetized by default” traffic will feel the pressure as parking shifts from a monetization topic to a security topic.

What smart domainers should be doing now

Most domain investors are not trying to hurt anyone. They’re not out there designing malware campaigns or scam funnels. They’re building portfolios and trying to make rational decisions about returns.

The challenge is that the environment around them has shifted, bringing new expectations.

A good first step is simply understanding where your traffic really goes. If you’re using zero-click or direct search monetization, it’s reasonable to assume that at least some fraction of your visitors may be landing on pages you’d never choose yourself. If you wouldn’t be comfortable walking a serious buyer through the complete journey - browser, click, redirect, final page - then it might be time to rethink how that name is monetized.

It also helps to move toward clean, transparent landers. A straightforward “this domain is for sale” page or a minimal brand-style placeholder gives users something they can immediately understand. It’s less likely to trigger abuse flags, and it keeps you out of long redirect chains where you have no real visibility or control.

There’s also the question of what you own. Clear typos of banks, governments, and global brands were already a gray area in the best of times. In this kind of environment, they’re more of a liability than an asset. Those are exactly the domains that show up in case studies, news stories, and enforcement actions when people talk about abuse.

Reputation matters too. It’s no longer enough to track visits and click-through rates. Smart investors also pay attention to whether their names appear on threat intelligence lists, how URL categorization systems classify their landers, and whether their portfolios are being lumped into “parked / risky” buckets by default.

And behind all of that is a simple strategic choice: focus on names that have a real future as brands, projects, or communities. Names that make sense for someone to actually build on will age better than names that only exist to pull a little value from stray type-in traffic.

Put differently, the more your business model is about extracting value from every unplanned visitor, the more exposed you are to where this conversation is heading. The more your model is about curating and presenting good names in a clean, honest way, the more aligned you are with the direction the web needs to go.

How we’re thinking about parking at it.com

First, we’re not anti-parking. If someone owns an it.com domain and wants to park it while they decide what to do with it, that’s their choice. Holding patterns are part of a domain’s lifecycle, and we understand that.

At the same time, we’re not building it.com as “a parking play.” Our vision for it.com is as a space for websites, businesses, projects, and communities. That mindset affects how we think about policy and abuse.

One of the ways that shows up is in what we do not do. We avoid wildcards and registry-level parking. Across various TLDs and providers, wildcards and large-scale registry or ISP parking have clearly contributed to this problem. When the infrastructure itself starts monetizing every mistake and every unregistered name, user safety and trust tend to suffer. We don’t like that direction, so we don’t follow it.

We also take abuse monitoring seriously. We watch for things like malware, phishing, and obvious impersonation of brands and institutions. We pay attention to domains that are clearly being used to funnel users into abusive content. And when there’s real abuse, we move on it. Not because we want to police how people use their domains, but because a namespace that becomes known as “unsafe” loses value for everyone - end users, businesses, and legitimate investors alike.

Our commitment is simple: we’re firm on abuse and fair with good-faith registrants. We respect that people use domains in different ways at different stages, including parking. The goal is straightforward: keep it.com a place people can trust and build on, not a place that bad actors can quietly turn into part of the problem.

A quick reality check

Parked domains used to be a corner of the web where investors made some extra money while they waited for the right buyer. That world is fading.

Today, parking - especially when combined with direct search and zero-click feeds - is increasingly being seen as part of the security threat landscape. That changes how enterprises view undeveloped names, how security vendors classify them, and how regulators view the domain ecosystem as a whole.

If you’re a domainer, this isn’t a reason to panic. It’s a reason to be intentional. Be honest about how you monetize your traffic. Keep your landers clean and understandable. Focus on names that deserve to be developed, not just exploited.

And if you’re running or choosing a namespace, it’s a good moment to ask a simple question:

Are we encouraging real use and watching abuse, or are we just squeezing every last click out of unclaimed territory?

At it.com, we’re leaning toward real use and strong abuse controls. We’ll keep monitoring abuse carefully, we’ll keep giving good-faith registrants room to operate, and yes - if you want to park an it.com name, we’re okay with that.

What matters most is what happens to the user on the other side of the click. That’s where trust is either earned or lost, and that’s the part we’re determined to protect.

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