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ICANN Investigates Insider Domain Name Snatching
Tech.Luver sends us word that, hot on the heels of reports that Verisign may be planning to sell DNS root server lookup data, ICANN has opened an investigation into a suspected practice by registrars it calls "domain name front running." The suspicion is that insiders at some registrars are using information from whois searches to snatch up desirable domain names before interested customers can register them. Here is ICANN's announcement of the investigation (PDF). ICANN asks that anyone who suspects they have been victimized by domain name front running to email them with details.
OK, I know yours was a joke post, but something pissed me off for YEARS that I don't think should be allowed. I wanted to register mcgrew.org or alternately mcgrew.com back when com, org, and net (and ones you can't get like gov and edu) were the only roots.
.com and .org for every name in the phone book, and was selling "your name can be your email!" mcgrew.com, smith.com, jones.com, even johnson.com (which one would expect to be a porn site) led to the same company.
.info and I managed to snag mcgrew.info and moved all the stuff I'd been polluting the net since 1997 with (yes, that particular page is older than slashdot). And newer stuff.
What infuriated me was that some sleazeballs had registered
Eventually they opened up
Of course, if I had actually managed to get mcgrew.com, the comedian with the same name as me out in Colorado probably would have sued me for it, despite the fact that I'm 10 years older than him.
-mcgrew
(then I discovered K5, back in its heyday, and actually had people READING my pollution, and strangely LIKING it. Still scratching my head over that one...)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
As much as front-running is annoying (at the very least), I think registering typo'd domains is actually worse. Considering how many domains are registered simply for the purpose of catching people who misspell the domain they want to visit, it may be a larger problem.
And from my experiences, it seems like the typo squatters usually bombard you with pop-ups and other annoying crapola on their sites when you accidentally wander into them. The front-runners at least seem kind enough to just tell you "this domain could be yours for only $1M". Bastardly, sure, but less of an annoyance than 4 pop-ups that trigger more pop-ups on being closed.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So I checked via godaddy.com, and it was available, but I didn't purchase it because my checking account was overdrawn. A while later(2 weeks to a month), I went to buy it, and it was taken. Whois said it was taken shortly after my availability check, by a company in Maine. It was cash-parked at Network Solutions.
Anyway, a few months later(the dates are vague, I didn't mark my calender) I checked it to see what the people from Maine were doing with the title of my life's work. It was still just cash-parked at Network Solutions. So I checked WHOIS again, to refresh my memory about the name of the company, and it was now owned by an individual in Maryland instead of a company in Maine, but here's the scariest part: the registration date had *magically* moved backwards to 2005!
I had personal reasons to remember very specifically that the location of the owner was in Maine. I didn't remember the company name, but I definitely remembered that the date of registration was just after I had checked it.
And it's still just cash-parked. When it first happened, because of "Maine" and some personal events, I suspected a certain person I knew from certain forums had taken it for basically spiteful reasons. But when the date was altered, I was mystified and paranoid. "Why would the CIA and time-traveling lizard-people from Sirius conspire to keep me from doing my little project under that name?" Now, I'm relieved to find a more plausible explanation. A scammer or scammers with access to official registration data. Makes sense, I also own several other domains, so I might pop up as a high-probability purchaser. But I never contacted the owner, and in the intervening time I've reworked things to release soon under another name that I've owned for years.
I did, however, pop off an email to ICANN detailing the events.
Let me reiterate what's been said by others on this thread: don't check a domain unless you're ready to purchase it immediately.