The top-level domain (TLD) .TK is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand located in the South Pacific. The .TK domain is managed by a company named Dot TK, a joint venture of the Government of Tokelau, its communication company Teletok and BV Dot TK, a private sector company which is a registry service provider based in the Netherlands.
Dot TK is unique among TLD operators. While most country code administrators charge to register a domain, Dot TK allows individuals and businesses worldwide to register .TK domains for free. The catch, according to their policies, is that these domains are only free if they’re in active use, and Dot TK has the right to cancel any domain that doesn’t maintain adequate traffic.
The free availability of the .TK domains has made it very popular worldwide. According to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief report from 2017, .TK was the largest ccTLD, with over 19.1 million domain names registered. However, .TK’s size isn’t necessarily a sign of its overall quality. Because of its loose registration policies, .TK has often been associated with a significant amount of cybercrime, including phishing and malware distribution.
Here are a few examples of how .TK domains have been used. A significant proportion of .TK domains are used for personal blogs and small businesses, especially in developing countries where the cost of domain registration might be prohibitive. On the other hand, .TK domains have been linked to several instances of cybercrime.
In 2010, internet security company McAfee found that .TK was the riskiest TLD, with over 10% of .TK sites posing a significant threat to web users. In that same year, a notorious virus called “ZeuS” used .TK domain names as a part of its botnet structure.
Sources:
- Tokelau Internet domain .TK, Information and Communications Technology. Government of Tokelau. https://www.tokelau.org.nz/Bulletin++Index/Information+and+Communications+Technology/Tokelau+Internet+domain+.tk.html
- Freenom world. https://www.freenom.world/en/index.html?lang=en
- The Domain Name Industry Brief, Verisign, Volume 14 – Issue 2– September 2017. https://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-september2017.pdf
- McAfee Reveals the Most Dangerous Domains to Surf and Search, McAfee, Dec 1, 2010. https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/about/newsroom/press-releases/press-release.html?news\_id=20101201005300
- One in Five .TK Domains Are Suspicious: An Investigation into the Abuse of .TK, IEEE Security & Privacy, Volume: 11, Issue: 5, Sept.-Oct. 2013. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6631551
