Today, the Irish Government launched a very important Covid-19 service through Gov.ie. The service is to allow people to register for a “Certificate of Recovery” within certain specifications. These certificates are going to be very important for people who have suffered and recovered from COVID-19 in the last 180 days. If you are one of these people, you can register for the Certificates of Recovery online. Or should I say, “Certifcate”. Because that’s how the government spelled the domain name they registered!
This domain is definitely a legitimate government website, as it is linked from the Gov.ie page for information on how to request the certificate, straight from the Department of Health. It is unfortunate that the “Access Service Here” button leads to a domain with a very unfortunate spelling error in the URL. This is potentially a very serious blunder, with ramifications that could have been very serious for literally anyone capable of spelling “certificate” correctly. However, we’ve got you covered. We took the liberty of registering the correct spelling, and now irishcovidcertificateportal.org will actually link to the correct website (with just one extra step in between).
Thankfully this error was spotted by people who had their hearts in the right place, before those who would use it with malicious intentions. Imagine how easy it would be to have taken the correct spelling, and advertise it as an official government website. Massive credit to IrishTech owner Adam Conway and a tech-enthusiast friend, Fionn Kelleher, for spotting this and acting quickly enough to register this domain before someone else could.
You can read more about the Certificate of Recovery at either the correct or incorrect URL now. It is, of course, a very essential function of getting Ireland all opened up again, so hopefully, we can all learn from this experience. Always double-check your spelling, especially when registering very important government domains.
