RSS Subscribe Domain Names: A Sneaky Attempt To Take My Name
If you have a domain name(s) that you've registered how muchthought have you given to who else might want the name? Thatquestion crossed my mind only in the context of - do I have aname that others might like to buy or one that could potentiallydrive traffic to a website. I was registering many domain names.Some names I wanted to use myself, some to keep, hoping theywould go up in value, and others to sell as soon as I could finda buyer. Most of the names I had made up - until it had becomedifficult to think of new names that had meaning and were notvery long. When that happened I started registering expireddomain names.
After accumulating several hundred names I decided to take abreak and pondered my next move. I didn't have to wait long.Within a week I received a notice from my registrar. It seemed aregistrar in Germany had someone who was transferring one of mydomain names to their account. How could they get away withthat? That was my first experience of having someone ste
I quickly emailed my registrar and asked what was going on andthat I had not given anyone permission to take one of my names.I was told my domain had already been transferred to someoneelse. I gave my registrar explicit instructions to cancel thetransfer, which they did immediately, and as soon as I got thename back they placed a lock on the domain so it could nothappen again.
Confident I had solved the problem, that incident quickly leftmy mind, as I had a myriad of other things to do. But no -things never seem so easy, as I came to realize a couple ofweeks later. I checked my email and there was an email from thatsame registrar, where two weeks earlier someone tried totransfer my domain name. It was a form letter in both Englishand German telling me they were transferring my domain name totheir registry. I asked a co-worker who was German to translatethe German language part. She verified that language said thesame as the English version. All my domains were locked so therewas nothing I had to do.
By now I wondered how my name, ~~~~fix.com*, which I made up,could be so important. I did some quick research on the Internetand found there was a company in Germany with the name ~~~~fix.It was starting to aggravate me that if someone wanted my dotcom version of the name why didn't they just make me an offerfor the name. It seemed awfully suspicious that someone wantedthat name so badly that they would try to transfer it when itwas plainly up for sale. The directory website where that namewas hosted showed a for sale notice along with a price.
I quickly composed a letter and emailed it to that registrarexpressing my thoughts. I also raised the price of the domainname once I had sent the email. Because I was upset about thematter I decided to raise the selling price by a factor of ten.I never received a response from my email and assumed the matterwas closed.
Well, to make a long story short I received three more emailswithin the next three weeks, each with attempts to get me totransfer my domain name to them. The emails included dubiousdocumentation and said "You must agree to enter into a newRegistration Agreement with us". I ignored all attempts to signaway my domain name to the other registrar.
The last four attempts to get me to surrender my domain name alloccurred just after ICANN changed the rules pertaining to domainnames. That new ruling took affect November 12, 2004 making iteasier (in my opinion) for someone to sneakily transfer a domainname. With the current new rules it seems all you have to do isnot respond to your registrar within five days of them sendingyou notice indicating your domain name is being transferred. Ifyou happen to be on vacation, not respond to your email quickly,or overlook such email, you may find yourself short a domainname. If however, your domain name(s) is locked, then youshouldn't have to worry about that problem. My impression istha
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3.22 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
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