Slashdot Mirror
Domains May Disappear After Search
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Daily Domainer has a story alleging that there may be a leak that allows domain tasters to intercept, analyze and register your domain ideas in minutes. 'Every time you do a whois search with any service, you run a risk of losing your domain,' says one industry insider. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC ) has not been able to find hard evidence of Domain Name Front Running but they have issued an advisory (pdf) for people to come forward with hard evidence it is happening. Here is how domain name research theft crimes can occur and some tips to avoiding being a victim."
Theft? Crimes? Does Slashdot now think, an idea can be "property" and/or "stolen"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No, because they get to sit on the domain name for free for 30 days and then drop it if they want. Domain Name registration is an amazingly shady part of the internet for being such an important piece. I have long suspected that the registrars (especially the no-name ones) and the domain squatters are one in the same.
I read the internet for the articles.
Can anyone give one legitimate reason why anyone would need to "trial" a domain? Is that to see how it looks in the browser's address bar?
Wouldn't doing away with that stupidity make things a lot harder for these losers that park / squat domains?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually most of bigger squatting operations don't pay a dime on a per name basis. They hold the name for 30 days, then release it at no cost.
They don't need to release it. They just get another shell company to snap it up.
Domain tasting is causing nothing but headaches for the internet at large and they need to abolish it.
When thinking of potential domain names, I usually use the inurl: function in Google. I generally only use part of the name too - that way you're able to see all the potential variations of the domain name you're thinking of working with (and possibly giving you some inspiration too)...
There's been some concern about this over at the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Much phishing seems to come from domains held for very short periods. But it turns out that's not "domain tasting". It's phishers buying domains with stolen credit card numbers, using retail domain registrars. After a few days, the credit card number is detected as stolen, the transaction is reversed by the bank, and the registrar deletes the domain.
This seems to be a separate problem from "domain tasting". But the "grace period" loophole that makes "domain tasting" possible also enables this scam. If registrars couldn't return domains to the TLD registry without paying, they'd have to raise their standards of customer validation.
Why is this so hard to verify. Use each registrar to test availability of domain xyzzyplugh99.com, changing the index number "99" for each test. Try back the next day and see which ones are sudden unavailable, then complain LOUDLY!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
none that I know of, but I do my whois for domain prospecting from my ISP's registration tool, thus once I find one not taken I'm already registering it. I did some work for a client, and as I had her write down everything she could think of wanting for a domain with her line of business. I ended up registering 10 different domains, figuring I would park those she didn't want with some basic advertisements and an offer to sell for a reasonable price. At first she was leary of having "so many different websites" Till I explained domain forwarding and all she had to do was pick her favorite for the main site and then the rest would point to it. She ended up buying all of them ($500 w/ a 3 year domain support agreement).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Please report to central maintenance. Your humor filter is defective.
Tho is domain squatting really a "petty crime"? I agree... it is petty to squat on a domain, as it is petty to jay walk, or spit on the sidewalk etc.
However, is it really so petty when it is systematic? Is it really so petty when it is repeated over and over to the point of the denial of others of their fair use of publically accessable services?
Surely it is petty to fill water bottles from park drinking fountains and turn around and sell the full bottles. Is it still petty when you have expanded the operation such that your organization has people at 90% of the fountains, constanatly filling water so that all the thirsty people who don't want to pay your extortionist prices need to stand in long lines and wait for their water? How about when you have taken all of the public fountains, and nobody can even get their water?
We are not talking about petty crime here, we are talking about organized crime.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"