A graph published by colorlib.com shows something fascinating:

The growth in the number of active internet domains grew steadily over the years. In fact, Nigel Morris-Cotterill's first domain, countermoneylaundering.com, was apparently one of the first 10,000 domains ever registered (it's till active - it's his personal professional domain). 

The dramatic increase during the period covering the CoVid-19 pandemic, when online frauds became rife, indicates that new domains were at the heart of criminal activity.

True many such domains are used solely for emails and there is no website as such, so they are used for phishing through email. 

This should come as no surprise: since the late 1990s we have been pointing out that new domains feature in many online frauds. Indeed, in Cleaning up the Net (2015, new edition in preparation) Morris-Cotterill said that one way to discourage online fraud was to charge more for domains and to create a holding period during which new domains were inactive. 

Colorlib says that on one day a record 14.5 million domains were issued. Morris-Cotterill says that it is inconceivable that so many new business websites were launched on one day. The only explanation, he says, is that templates were used by criminals to launch sites in seconds to support phishing and other criminal activity. 

The question, as always, is who makes the money. The answer is the domain registrars.