Despicable, shameless behavior.

There can be no other words to describe those looking to quickly cash in on yesterday’s tragic Boston marathon bombing. Within minutes of the two explosions taking place, dozens of new internet domains were registered in what looks likely to be a scam targeting people wanting to donate money to victims.

Domains including bostonexplosion.com, bostonmarathonvictimfund.com and bostonrelief2013.com were among over 125 new websites that popped up in the hours after Monday’s bombing, according to the website The Domains. Of these, at least TWENTY of them appeared within TEN MINUTES of the bombs going off, while the rest were added over the next few hours.

It’s not clear what the owners are planning to do with their new sites, but The Domains’ Michael Berkens believes that whether they intend to run a blatant scam or not, it’s clear enough that the main motive is financial gain:

“While we don’t know every registrants intention, we do know historically that many of the domain names registered immediately after were done to get traffic and make money parking domains or worse.”

Berken’s suspicions were raised by the fact that the vast majority of new domains were registered privately, meaning they can’t be traced to any individual. However, a few individuals were apparently dumb enough to use their own names when buying the domains, prompting Berken to take action and “name and shame” the individuals and companies concerned.

“As the editor of TheDomains and as a domainer personally I hate to see these type of registrations, so here the registrant information for some of the domain names that don’t have privacy on the registrations,” writes Berken.

Among those shamed were FusionWorks LLC of Saratoga, which registered Bostonexplosion.com and bostonexplosions.com within ten minutes of the bombs going off; Mr. Myers of Queen Anne, MD, who registered the domain bostonmarathonbomb.com; Thomas Shaffer of Fort Worth, Texas, owner of bostonmarathonrelief.com; and Web Service Resource Associates Inc of Merritt island, Florida, the proud owner of the new bostonmarathonbombs.com domain.

It’s not just domain owners doing it either. People are also using social media to try and exploit the tragedy. One of the worst examples was the Twitter account BostonMarathon that appeared just minutes after the explosions took place, claiming: “For every retweet we will donate $1.00 for the #BostonMarathon victims #PrayforBoston.”

The account appears to be nothing more than a crude attempt to mimic the genuine @BostonMarathon feed, and was shut down by Twitter a few hours later following multiple complaints.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reports of another fake twitter account that emerged, HopeForBoston, which posted messages asking people to pray for the victims and later, put up a random photo of a young girl runner that it claimed to be one of the victims.

Sadly, scams like this seem to be all too common following such tragedies, as greater numbers of people learn how to take advantage of trending topics online in their aftermath.

Blue Alert, an organization that dedicates itself to the arrest of people who injure police officers, warned that some scammers may even attempt to cold call people asking for money for victims:

“If you receive a phone call for Donations for the Boston Explosion, it’s a scam. Donate to the Red Cross,” said Blue Alert in a tweet.

We should point out that not all of the new domains appear to be quite so ill-intentioned. bostonmarathonbombing.com appeared hours after the blasts, and currently displays a warning that advises people not to donate money to any sites or social media groups that have popped up recently – instead directing them to the Red Cross or yesterday’s Reddit discussion that became the go-to news source for anyone worried about friends or family.