January 19, 2021
NTIA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have successfully concluded a “trusted notifier” pilot program to curb access to illegal online opioid sales by working with domain name registries. A trusted notifier is generally recognized by a registry or registrar for providing credible and accurate information about illegal or abusive website content to domain name registries and/or registrars.
The new working relationships created through the program led to nearly 30 domain names associated with websites that were offering misbranded and/or unapproved opioids for sale to U.S. consumers being rendered inaccessible via the Domain Name System. The pilot also yielded valuable insights into potential mechanisms to help in the fight against the opioid crisis.
The Department of Commerce and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in June announced the voluntary, 120-day pilot program, conducted in cooperation with three U.S. domain name registries: Verisign, Registry Services, LLC (formerly Neustar Registry Services), and Public Interest Registry.
During the pilot, which concluded in October, the FDA referred domain names for potential technical action to the registries, which administer the .com, .net, .us, .biz, and .org top level domains.
