Ddos 
If you are considering studying in Europe, it’s important to be cautious of educational institutions or academies appearing in Google search results under the .edu.eu domain. Many of these entities may not exist at all and, in some cases, are fraudulently issuing so-called MBA certificates under the guise of official institutions.
Cybersecurity researcher @JimYan recently published an investigative report on the deceptive use of .edu.eu domains, revealing that a private commercial entity has registered the domain and created numerous subdomains claiming to represent prestigious European educational institutions, all in an effort to defraud students of their tuition fees.
In most countries, .edu domains are reserved for accredited educational institutions. However, many European universities use country-specific domains (ccTLDs)—such as .ac.uk for the UK or .fr for France. Institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, and Heidelberg University use these localized domain suffixes.
By contrast, the .edu.eu domain was introduced in 2018 as a commercial initiative by a private company called Euro Education Domains Registry Limited (EEDRL). The company registered the .edu.eu domain with the EU and has since sold subdomains under this extension.
Most organizations operating under the .edu.eu suffix are obscure private schools or self-styled international training institutions. Examples include the European Institute of Leadership and Management (eilm.edu.eu) based in Dublin, Ireland, and the International Business Academy of Switzerland (ibas.edu.eu).
While these institutions showcase a wide array of impressive accreditations, further scrutiny reveals that these credentials are issued by private organizations or industry associations, obtainable through payment rather than awarded by legitimate educational authorities in EU member states.
Moreover, organizations using the .edu.eu suffix do not own these domains outright—they lease subdomains from EEDRL. The .edu.eu extension itself is not sanctioned by ICANN, which only recognizes .eu. The European Commission has never authorized any entity to use .edu.eu as an official educational domain.
Cases have already emerged in which students have been defrauded by institutions operating under these domains. In one instance, a student paid full tuition to a supposed private university in Italy (iep.edu.eu), only for the institution to vanish without a trace and refuse any refund. The website, built from a generic template, lacked evidence of a real campus or operations.
An academic investigation uncovered that an individual named Martin Nielsen was behind multiple .edu.eu domains, such as ibss.edu.eu and ibas.edu.eu, using them to sell fraudulent MBA and DBA certificates.
To enhance the illusion of legitimacy, these groups even created fictitious accreditation bodies. Victims paid thousands of dollars for certificates that held no academic value, as they were issued by fabricated industry associations with no regulatory oversight. None of these credentials are recognized by official educational authorities in EU member states.
While there is no direct evidence linking EEDRL to the fraudulent activity, it is clear that the company’s domain verification process is ineffective, allowing bad actors to obtain subdomains and exploit the .edu.eu suffix for credibility.
Analysis shows that many of these .edu.eu websites use the same DNS services provided by a cloud hosting provider in a specific country. The sites also resolve to the same IP addresses, indicating they may be controlled by a single entity.
Examples include the Southern Technical University – Colorado Campus (stu.edu.eu), Asia-Pacific School of Business (apsb.edu.eu), and the Euro-Asian Higher Education and Social Sciences Institute (ehess.edu.eu), all of which share a common server.
Amusingly, institutions like the Asia-Pacific School of Business claim to own a globally recognized domain system (e.g., apsb.edu.eu, apsb.edu.vn, apsb.edu.ky, apsb.ac.nz, apsb.ac.cn), suggesting more interest in domain collection than in providing education. All these domains are commercially registered, requiring no formal accreditation, and even contain basic spelling errors in the listed administrative contact emails.
Additionally, domains such as euraca.edu.eu, european.edu.eu, and alarabia.edu.eu all share the same server IP. Others like avicenna.edu.eu, college.edu.eu, and euc.edu.eu also appear linked. This suggests that either a commercial operation or fraudulent network has created an array of fake educational institutions using these domains to entrap unsuspecting students.
In light of all evidence, the truth behind the .edu.eu domain becomes evident—it is a privately run, commercial project devoid of official recognition or meaningful oversight.
Worse still, it has become a haven for educational scams and diploma mills—entities that issue meaningless certificates under the guise of academic legitimacy. For prospective students, the presence of a .edu.eu domain should not be seen as a mark of credibility, but rather as a red flag signaling a sophisticated and well-packaged deception.
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