Buckingham Palace buys up Royal Family domain names

Buckingham Palace has bought up dozens of website addresses for members of the Royal Family to protect their online identities, fuelling speculation it will launch websites about them.

Online records show that an official at Buckingham Palace registered a series of domain names including countessofwessex.com, theprincessroyal.org, dukeofkent.org and earlandcountessofwessex.com at the start of this month.

These royals currently do not have their own dedicated websites, instead having pages about them within the official website of the British Monarchy, royal.gov.uk.

It appears the domain names princessbeatrice.org and princesseugenie.org may also have been bought by the palace, having been registered anonymously at the same time as Buckingham Palace’s website-buying spree.

The Duke of York already has his own website, featuring pages about Princess Beatrice and Eugenie, but the princesses do not have their own sites.

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said: “We have purchased a number of URLs as a precautionary measure to stop others using them and in case we want to use them in the future.”

Royals to already have their own dedicated sites include the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, whose joint site includes official biographies of the couple and a page dedicated to Prince George.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall also have a joint website and Prince Harry has his own.

The domain names bought by Buckingham Palace are thought to have cost between £5 and £30 each and will prevent the Royals falling victim to so-called “cyber-squatters”, who buy up unregistered domain names related to a public figure or company before demanding a high price to sell it back to them.