Bruce Billson urges SMEs to consider .au domain before the cutoff that could prove “catastrophic”

Ben Ice

August 12, 2022

Bruce Billson. Source: SmallBizWeek

Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson has urged small businesses to protect their online property, as the cutoff date for priority access to shortened domains looms.

The changes allow anyone with a connection to Australia to register a new category of domain name — instead of ending in .com.au, .net.au, .asn.au, people could register .au as a shorter form.

For instance, example.com.au could become example.au as a shorter form.

Until auDA’s 20 September deadline, owners of domain names will have priority access to the .au shortened domains for their sites.

“The consequences of not registering your existing business name by this deadline could be catastrophic for a business if a rival or someone else took their online name,” Billson warned.

After this date, anyone can purchase the domain name and begin stealing traffic, impersonating the original site, or demand dollars.

“I implore all small business owners to take a few minutes to work out if they want the shortened .au domain or will be unhappy for someone else to have it,” Billson said.

“If you want it, small business owners, I urge you to take a few minutes and few dollars to register it or potentially face someone else grabbing it and using it to digitally ambush your business, to demand big dollars later to surrender it to you, or misuse it to masquerade as you or to help them engage in cyber-crime.”

Billson described the public awareness campaign around the changes and deadline as “less than impactful”, and said he was “not surprised so few people know about this”.

“My engagement with small businesses and a wide range of organisations representing small and family businesses is that overwhelmingly they are either not aware of this change or they do not understand the potential consequences.”

The .au Domain Administration (auDA), a non-government regulator, rejected Billson’s letter requesting an extension to the deadline.

“So all I can do is try and make sure small and family business are not caught short when it comes to the shortened .au domain name,” he said.

“Domain names are very much the identity of a business and critical to their success. Small businesses cannot afford to have their identity sold to someone else.”

Small businesses can check information about their current domain name licences here.

“Please note that if you choose not to register the direct match of your domain name in the new namespace by 20 September, it will become available to other eligible persons from that date,” auDA said in an email callout.

auDA announced the changes in March, with the intention to open up a wider choice of domain names and bring Australia in line with other countries such as the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, which offer similar shortened domains.