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RealNames Closing Shop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the huge-surprise dept.

The_THOMAS writes: "The company RealNames, which tried to make a buck off of the domain name gold rush by adding their own layer on top of the ICANN system, is going out of business (Full story here). To review, the RealNames system is a browser plugin which redirects a user who types 'cookies' in the IE address bar to Nabisco.com. The reason for the closure appears to be the decision by M$ to NOT renew their agreement with RealNames which expires in June."

1 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Good by darnellmc · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm glad they are gone. Many names could not be purchased and their fee structure sucked - IMHO.

    And to top it off they could not protect their customer database and compromised every one of their customer's credit cards.

    I never actually used their service, but made inquiries in the past, for names that I found they would let no one purchase. Some common terms could not be purchased. Even inquiries required giving them a credit card number. And eventhough I never signed up, there was no way to remove my card from their database afterward. I did not know they kept it stored and when they were hacked I had to get a new card number FAST.

    I hope no such service is ever made again!