If whois information from recent domain registrations is to be taken as a clue, then we should prepare ourselves for a new wave of 419 scams soon.

CheapWebHostingAndDomain.com analyzed the whois registration data from thousands of domains registered in the month of July. It was found out that 90% of .com, .net, and .org domains with keywords ‘shop’, ‘shopping’, ‘buy’, ‘cheap’, ‘price’ etc. were registered by people/companies with addresses based in Nigeria. Not only this, a majority of sellers on Sedo.com, who are selling domains with above keywords are getting a huge response from Nigeria based entities showing interest in their domains. Overall domain registration from Nigeria rose from less than 1% in July last year, to more than 30% in July this year.

Now, there can be only two reasonably possible explanations behind this. Either the Nigerian IT industry is getting a huge boost from its government and private investors, or what Nigeria is know for best, the 419 scammers, are coming up with another superb idea to scam people all over the world.

Until now, most of the 419 scammers were either individuals or small groups with limited resources usually including a computer, Internet access and a phone. But, according to some recent news reports, a huge mafia has emerged in Nigeria who are planning to run these scams on a larger scale, with the help of more money/resources they have at their hands. From the domain registration data analysis done be us, the hints point at a huge number of fake e-commerce websites being set up in Nigeria. It looks like the scammers are planning to set up thousands or even millions of fake online shopping websites that appear to be legitimate, and trick unsuspecting users into handing over their credit card information.

With so many websites launched, the scammers can be sure that at least a few will rank good in Google. And with really cheap prices for almost everything, a lot of people will fall prey and enter their credit card numbers, only to find out unauthorized charges on their credit card bills later. According to some sources, a few banks based in Africa offer merchant accounts that make claiming chargebacks really difficult for the consumer.

http://www.CheapWebHostingAndDomain.com, a website that reviews and rates various web hosting and domain registration companies, has released a report titled “The Future Of Domain Names And Web Hosting Industry.” The report covers the various aspects of where this industry is headed in the coming decade.

According to the report, new domain registrations will continue to rise, especially with new TLDs being introduced by ICANN. Also, the gTLDs that are going to be introduced early next year, will fuel the exponential growth in domain registrations. The fact that most of the favorable domain names have been registered under the .com, .org and .net TLDS, will not prove to be a hindrance for future domain registration sales. “People are being creative and experimenting with newer TLDs like .ly, .in, .at and .co,” said a company spokesman.

Regarding web hosting, the reports notes that the stiff competition among hosting providers during the last decade has resulted in rock bottom prices. The company does not expect it to go any further down, because some of the hosting companies are already below red, and others are barely surviving. The spokesman said, “We expect the prices to go up in the future, as more companies will merge, and the larger ones will take over the smaller ones.”

In conclusion, the report says that this industry is going to be very profitable in the coming decade, and investing in this sector is a good idea at the moment. The full report can be downloaded from the company website at http://www.cheapwebhostinganddomain.com/