After FIJ’s Story, Namecheap Suspends Private Website Selling Nigerians’ NIN, Other Data
Xpressverify, an identity verification website that makes money from selling out the personal information of Nigerians, has been suspended by its domain registrar, FIJ can report.
This development follows a report by FIJ detailing how Xpressverify had unrestricted access to the National Identification Database and personal details of Nigerians despite being a privately owned website.
Namecheap Incorporated, the domain registrar through which the website’s domain was bought, hinted at the domain suspension via its official X handle on Sunday.
However, FIJ found that this website might still be available to some individuals, despite the domain’s suspension. This, according to the domain registrar, might be due to a phenomenon called propagation.
Typically, requests to view websites do not go to host servers directly. Depending on the location of the person searching, requests to view a website go to the memory of the local internet service providers to source information.
It takes 24 to 72 hours for these internet service providers to update their caches. It could therefore take the same amount of time for the suspension to take effect for internet users in some locations.
Meanwhile, in response to FIJ’s story, Bosun Tijani, the minister of information and digital economy, has stated that the Nigeria Data Protection Commission will work with the National Identity Management Commission to investigate the situation.
