UK government unprepared for domain emergency

July 2004

The UK government has introduced a new initiative to inform citizens about major incidents; however preparingforemergencies.gov.uk provoked its own domain name emergency when civil servants failed to register the public variants


Earlier this week the UK government announced an £8m campaign to help the public prepare for terror attacks and other emergencies, including advice booklets for every UK household, supported by a series of television adverts and a web site at preparingforemergencies.gov.uk.

However, no consideration seems to have been given to protecting related domain names and a number have been snapped up by third parties within hours of the initiative's launch. One domain - preparingforemergencies.co.uk - already sports a parody of the government's site. Obviously this is rather embarrassing for the government and doubtless some Whitehall mandarin will be regretting their lack of forethought.