The Duchess of Sussex appears to have forgotten the golden rule of buying domain names: buy all the domain names.
As of Friday, the mysterious site had a simple message on it: “Forgiveness. Permission. Please donate to the Trussell Trust.”
It then linked to a JustGiving page purportedly in support of a well-known UK food bank charity.
The JustGiving page has the message: “not meghan. hope meghan wouldn’t mind.”
It adds: “thoughts with catherine. x” — a likely reference to Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, who announced on March 22 that she was undergoing treatment for cancer.
The maker of the page, who did not leave contact information, was unreachable for comment.
At the time of publication, the fundraiser had attracted more than £8,300, over $10,000, far exceeding its £1,000 target.
The Sussexes did not immediately respond to a BI request for comment, sent outside of US working hours.
Donors to the food bank used the comment section to pass on remarks about Meghan and Prince Harry.
“A worthy cause that the Sussexes would no doubt approve of,” one donor wrote.
Another was a little more pointed: “Fantastic — No one needs 200 pound jars of jam — this is a brilliant cause and thankyou for diverting the uk website to real people not shallow lifestyle gurus.”
It’s unclear what Markle plans to do with the American Riviera Orchard brand, but an associated trademark application says the brand intends to sell tableware, cookbooks, jams, and spreads.
The Trussell Trust, meanwhile, is the UK’s leading food bank charity, supporting a network of 1,200 food banks across the country.
In a statement sent to BI, the charity’s director of public engagement, Sophie Carre, said: “The charity is not connected with this website domain and have no knowledge of who set it up.”
But she said that the trust would accept any donations that ensue, saying that “the money raised would not meet the requirements for rejection.”
The Sussexes appear not to have learned lessons from previous cybersquatting efforts.
In 2020, their Archewell Foundation was targetted, with the domain archewellfoundation.com briefly directing visitors to a YouTube video of Kanye West’s, or Ye’s, song “Gold Digger.” (The actual foundation URL is archewell.org.)
Ending a domain with just “.uk,” as in this latest case, is not common even in the UK — where domain names typically end with “.co.uk,” or “.org.uk.”
But when you’re part of the UK’s most famous family, you should probably cover all of your bases.
