123-reg

123-reg is the UK's largest accredited domain registrar^[1] providing internet services to small and medium sized business. 123-reg is part of HEG, Europe's largest privately owned hosting company.^[2] As of 2016, 123-reg was said to manage over 3.5 million domain names and is said to be connected to over 1m websites in the UK representing 1 in 5 of the UK’s active websites.

History

123-reg was founded in 2000^[3] by Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford who prior to this also set up Webfusion Internet Solutions Ltd in 1997.^[4] According to the company's parent, 123-reg became the UK's largest domain registrar in 2004 and passed the 3 million domain names under management in 2012.^[5]

VPS Deletion Episode

On 16 April 2016, 123-reg admitted a major deletion of a large number of VPS servers caused by an error during what should have been routine maintenance.^[6] The event deleted hundreds of websites with users losing sites and access to data on their VPS service. By 24 April 2016 the situation was still ongoing. During this period 123-reg had a further data breach with customers being able to see the support tickets of other account holders^[7]

References

1. ↑ "Registrar List - Nominet". Nominet. Retrieved 2016-03-22. 
2. ↑ "HEG: Hosting Europe's SMEs | Megabuyte". www.megabuyte.com. Retrieved 2016-09-08. 
3. ↑ "Where To Register Domain Names And Host Your Web Site". King Solutions. Retrieved 2016-03-22. 
4. ↑ "Notts Internet Company Acquired By Plc. - Information Technology and Telecoms - UK". www.mondaq.com. Retrieved 2016-03-22. 
5. ↑ "Welcome to HEG - Inspiring Next Generation Businesses". HEG. Retrieved 2016-03-22. 
6. ↑ reporter, Chris Foxx Technology. "Web host 123-reg deletes sites in clean-up error". BBC News. Retrieved 2016-04-24. 
7. ↑ "Exclusive: 123-reg suffered serious security lapse while deleting 67 servers". Cloud Pro. Retrieved 2016-04-24.