The .io domain was delegated by the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to British entrepreneur
Paul Kane in 1997 together with the ccTLDs
.ac (
Ascension Island),
.sh (
Saint Helena), and
.tm (
Turkmenistan). Kane operated them for private benefit under the trade name "
Internet Computer Bureau" from 1997 until 2017. In 2014, Kane claimed that "profits are distributed to the authorities for them to operate services as they see fit" and that "Each of the overseas territories has an account and the funds are deposited there because obviously the territories have expenses that they incur and it's offsetting that." However the UK government has repeatedly stated that this is untrue: "There is no agreement between the UK Government and
ICB regarding the administration of the .io domain" and "the Government receives no revenues from the sales or administration of this domain." The first subdomain was registered under .IO in 1998, when
Levi Strauss & Co. registered the domain levi.io. In April 2017, Paul Kane sold the Internet Computer Bureau holding company to privately held domain name registry services provider
Afilias for $70.17m in cash. In July 2017, a security issue with the .io domain occurred when a security researcher managed to take control of four of the seven authoritative
name servers for the domain, which potentially would have given them control of all the
DNS traffic for the domain. In December 2020, Afilias' owner Hal Lubsen sold it to privately held
Donuts for an undisclosed sum. One month later, in January 2021, Donuts was acquired by private equity firm
Ethos Capital, again for an undisclosed sum. In 2022, the Mauritian government was considering how to progress with the issue. In October 2024, the UK announced that it would hand over sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius once a treaty is finalised. In July 2021, the
Chagos Refugees Group UK submitted a complaint to the Irish government against domain-name speculators Paul Kane and
Afilias, seeking repatriation of the .IO ("Indian Ocean") country-code top-level domain and payment of back royalties from the $7m/year in revenue generated by the domain. While attempts to repatriate top-level domains are not uncommon, this one is notable in that it cites consumer and human rights violations of the
OECD's 2011
Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises rather than
multistakeholder representation under
ICANN policy, and because the .io domain has enjoyed commercial success, particularly among
cryptocurrency companies, with more than 270,000 domains registered.
Future In October 2024, the
United Kingdom announced that it would eventually cede the
British Indian Ocean Territory to
Mauritius, while maintaining the military base on Diego Garcia via an initial 99-year lease. After the transfer, current IANA rules may require the .io domain to be phased out, which would take at least 5 years. This depends on whether IO is removed from the ISO 3166-1 standard. Historically, some exceptions have been granted, as was the case for
.su. On 22 May 2025, an agreement was signed that will cause the British Indian Ocean Territory to be handed over to Mauritius once it enters into force. ==Registration and restrictions==