Back in July 2024, we wrote the first article exposing that Drop.com.au was allowing a single “client” of theirs called “SEO Web Recovery” to register 1238 expired Australian domain names in one single day. Bear in mind there’s only around 1500 Australian domain names that expire each day.
A few weeks later we exposed how the “Director” and another “Effective Director” from Drop.com.au both wrote on a “domain blog” they owned that “Domain Tasting is a “good strategy” and “Tasting Domains is allowed in Australia!” (quote link).
Then in September 2024, we wrote that “one single company called “SEO Web Recovery” purchased 96.3% of ALL the expired domains over the past 90 days. They exclusively purchased them through the monopoly “Drop.com.au” drop catcher, and exclusively parked them using the “Above.com” domain monetisation service, that the owners of “Drop.com.au” own themselves.”
The CEO of auDA at the time, Rosemary Sinclair, did nothing about any of this, while tens of thousands of domain names were being scooped up every month by one single private company.
Rosemary Sinclair left auDA 3 months later, at the end of December.
Meanwhile, in mid-January, Bruce Tonkin took up his role as the new auDA CEO.
On exactly January 14 2025, we released our scathing article entitled “This is how auDA ruined the trust and security of Australian domain names from 2020-2024.”
We wrote “Drop.com.au (and it’s related entities) caught 271,797 domains over the past 6 months. This means, left to continue, Drop.com.au will catch more than 500,000 expired domain names, uncontested, every year going forward.”
Only 7 days after we wrote the above article, on January 21 2025, suddenly, SEO Web Recovery STOPPED buying nearly every single expired domain name, every day…
Here are the numbers of domains SEO Web Recovery purchased the day before, on January 20: (1060 domains)

And, here are the numbers of domains SEO Web Recovery purchased on January 21: (1 domain)

You can see they finally stopped “Domain Tasting” and hoarding and warehousing 96% of every expired domain name, every day, on this date, January 21…
This was seven days after our article – “This is how auDA ruined the trust and security of Australian domain names from 2020-2024.”
Around a week after that, came the bombshell “Important Letter to all Registrars”, “IDENTITY DIGITAL (au Domain Registry) have implemented a system to STOP certain registrars from “Domain Tasting” over 500,000 domain names per year. (link here)
This comes after our recent articles exposing that the trust and security of Australian domain names have been destroyed during Rosemary Sinclair’s term as auDA CEO.
This is a sub-textual WIN for the Australian domain name industry and looks like Bruce Tonkin is acting fast in his new role as auDA CEO to save the trust and security of Australian domain names. This could be a great first step forward to getting our Australian domain name industry back on the right track…
You can read how Identity Digital (Domain Name Registry) introduced new “fees” that finally effectively banned domain name tasting in Australia, by making it too costly and unprofitable.
Whoever thought “Domain Tasting is a “good strategy” and “Tasting Domains is allowed in Australia!” now has egg on their face. Because it’s now a dumb strategy.
Well done to Identity Digital and Bruce Tonkin for understanding how ridiculous these actions were and for attempting to improve the trust and security of Australian domain names.
The only problem is, what is going to happen with the hundreds and thousands of domain names that SEO Web Recovery were allowed to register in this fashion for the past six months?
The next crucial step forward for auDA and Identity Digital is, how are they planning to end the equally-ridiculous expired domain drop catching monopoly? (find out more about the drop catching monopoly here).
Ending the Drop.com.au expired domain name monopoly is the ONLY way to fully restore the trust and security of Australian domain names into the future.