Axghouse at ICANN Webinar: Mitigating DNS Abuse & Trusted Notifiers

Digital piracy, phishing, and brand impersonation have evolved from isolated incidents into highly organized, long-term technical operations. However, the tools available to rights holders and cybersecurity experts to mitigate these threats at the DNS level remain outdated and slow.

At a recent joint webinar hosted by ICANN's APRALO and EURALO Policy Forums—"Understanding the Role of Trusted Notifiers in DNS Abuse Mitigation"—Oleksandr Honcharenko, Digital Enforcement Expert at Axghouse, addressed the global internet governance community to highlight the industry's most pressing pain points and propose actionable solutions. Learn more about the event in the official ICANN Engagement Calendar.

The Main Difficulty: Lack of Rapid Feedback from Registrars

During the presentation, Axghouse shared the practical market reality: 99% of digital rights enforcement work currently bypasses domain registrars entirely. Why? Because reporting intellectual property infringement or DNS abuse to registrars is extremely slow, and there is no dedicated, streamlined "Trusted path" in this chain. When a malicious domain is actively damaging a brand or stealing copyrighted material, rights holders cannot afford to wait days or weeks for manual verification. As a result, enforcement teams are forced to focus almost exclusively on hosting providers to achieve quick tactical content removal.

However, this tactical approach creates a serious structural risk. Without a fast and reliable mechanism for interacting directly with domain registrars, "bad domains"—sites built specifically to violate the law—can remain active for years. Even after receiving thousands of automated complaints, these platforms simply migrate from one hosting provider to another while remaining fully accessible at the DNS level.

The Main Thesis: We Need a Unified Tool for Domain Restrictions

The central message Axghouse delivered to the ICANN audience was clear: the industry needs a specialized, automated infrastructure to handle malicious domains that intentionally ignore abuse notices.

Relying on bots that "guess" infringements or flood systems with unverified, automated spam complaints harms the ecosystem. Instead, the future of internet security relies on Trusted Notifiers and Flaggers (such as Axghouse, an official EU DSA Trusted Flagger) that provide clean, human-verified data directly to registrars.

But sharing data is only the first step. The market lacks specialized tools designed specifically to manage, track, and take action against high-volume, non-cooperative domains. Axghouse highlighted the urgent need to develop dedicated interfaces where verified complaints can trigger immediate systemic restrictions on domains proven to be long-term, systematic repeat infringers.

Audience Reaction & Q&A Session

After the presentation, webinar participants inquired about the Removee platform, specifically how its internal community is structured and how regular users can join it.

Oleksandr Honcharenko explained that the project is currently focused on removing copyright infringements and fake profiles (impersonation). He confirmed that the update, featuring a free community space to discuss these issues, will be launched within the next month.

Looking Ahead: A New Era of Verified Action

Axghouse is not just highlighting these structural flaws—we are actively building the solution. The principles we presented at the ICANN webinar (moving away from unverified bots, utilizing structured expert data, and building direct trusted reporting channels) are already being institutionalized.

We are currently putting the final touches on our upcoming ecosystem platform, Removee. Designed as a professional environment for verified abuse management and rapid response, Removee embodies the exact "Trusted Notifier" logic the industry critically needs. Stay tuned for our official launch next month as we prepare to put these advanced tools directly into the hands of rights holders and content creators worldwide.

Watch the webinar