NSI Registers Every Domain Checked

An anonymous reader writes "In a developing story, registrar Network Solutions has been caught front-running domain names. Any domain names searched via NSI's whois are being immediately purchased by the registrar, thereby preventing a registrant from purchasing the domain at any other registrar. There are multiple reports of this practice over at DomainState.com." Update: 01/09 01:58 GMT by KD : shashib writes to let us know that NSI has issued a response to the accusations of front running.

Comments

Re:Make it cost them ...

[anotherone]

RTFA. If the user doesn't buy in a few days, they delete the domain- doesn't cost them anything.

Re:Any way to...

[ergo98]

Make them bankrupt themselves purchasing bogus domains?

I doubt they're making any financial commitment "purchasing" these domains. They're simply putting in a database record, and then removing it within the 5-day grace period (thus removing any liability to any other registrars).

Re:Can't be ALL of them.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

1. Go to networksolutions.com and check the availability of a random domain
2. Go to some other registrar (domainsatcost.ca worked for me) and try the same thing.

Mysteriously, the domain is suddenly unavailable.

Re:Any way to...

[Hawke]

Er, no. Verisign owns the .com, .net registries. Verisign used to own Network Solutions, but they were spun out several years ago.

Re:Any way to...

[djtack]

Here ya go... One thing, I noticed NSI stops registering domains after about 50 or so.

#!/usr/bin/perl

$count = $ARGV[0] || 8;
@charlist = (A .. Z, a .. z, 0 .. 9);

while (1) {
my $domain = "";
foreach $i (1 .. $count) {

$word = `dd bs=1 count=4 if=/dev/random 2> /dev/null`;

$number = unpack I1, $word;
$number = $number / 2**32;
$number *= scalar @charlist;
$number = int $number;

$domain .= $charlist[$number];
}

print `whois -h whois.networksolutions.com $domain.com`;
sleep 2;
}

PR response from NSI

[vmxeo]

Domain Name Wire has posted a response from NSI's PR department. Here's the relevent quote from NSI:

I just got off the phone with Susan Wade, who heads PR for Network Solutions. "This is a customer protection measure to protect customers from frontrunners," said Wade. "After four days, we release the domain." According to Wade, Network Solutions instituted this program as a test over the past few weeks. I asked if Network Solutions is actually acting as a frontrunner by doing this and she said there's a distinction. First, they are not monetizing the domains. Second, they have no intention of keeping the domains. All domains are released after the four day period.

Translation: So if anyone else does it, it's bad, because they're domain front-running. But when we do it's it's ok, because, uh, we say so. No, really!

Re:Any way to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tried 3 domain names. The 1st and 3rd domain name, I used their website search feature. They snagged those 2 up quick. The second domain I searched, I did a "whois -h whois.networksolutions.com ..." and they did not snatch up that domain name. Apparently, they are only snatching searched made through their website interface.