I bought myself a copy of today’s “The Punch” (a Nigerian daily newspaper) and turned to page three, only to see this headline: “Cyber fraud leads to blockage of Nigeria’s IP address” on a red background.
Apparently, GoDaddy (an ICANN-accredited domain registrar) was fed-up with the high level of cybercrime emanating out of Nigeria, and thus decided to take this drastic action of blocking all the IP addresses identified with Nigeria, from accessing thier website – www.godaddy.com
I am yet to verify this independently though. (I’m currently in Nigeria)
According to a table displayed within the news report, the top 10 perpetrators of cybercrime are
1. United States – 78.75%
2. Canada – 3.03%
3. Nigeria – 2.87%
4. United Kingdom – 2.32%
5. Italy – 2.01%
6. Greece – 1.04%
7. Romania – 0.92%
8. France – 0.86%
9. Spain – 0.6%
10. China – 0.58%
The info above is said to have been sourced from the US Internet Fraud Complaint Centre.
Now, one glaring fact is that, Nigeria has been isolated by GoDaddy Inc, for the ban. Why not extend the ban to at least, the first five countries reported to be the worst perpetrators of cyber fraud. I’d then see how they’d remain in business after banning the top countries from which Internet traffic originates.
I went to a cybercafe in Ibadan (one of the largest cities in South western Nigeria) where I knew they were using VSAT for their Internet connection and attempted to open www.godaddy.com
Indeed, the site opened, without an fuss. Why waste time on such a fruitless exercise as banning Nigeria?
They should just tell us something else or keep their peace.
Leave a Reply