Network Solutions Domain Scam

[mkultra333]

Just thought I'd warn people, many of you probably already know but for those who don't. DON'T check a domain name availabilty on Network Solutions website. I made the mistake a couple of days ago. It told me the obscure domain I wanted, which I know had been free for probably a year, was still free. Within 24 hours (I don't know how soon) the obscure name was suddenly taken by some guy in Shanghai. Sure, he just happened to buy it the exact day I did a whois check at Network Solutions...

I did some research, turns out last year NS started automatically stealing any domain that people looked into, on the grounds that they were "protecting" it for the user. Of course, to register it you'd have to buy it from NS at their highly inflated prices. They were taken to court, I don't know how that turned out, but now it looks to me like something sneakier is going on, and they are deliberately leaking the search info to some third party, probably a company they're connnected with somehow.

They can get away with this because there is a 5 day grace period where registrars can change their mind and relinquish the site. So poachers grab the site, hold it for 5 days to see if it gets lots of traffic or the purchaser is a sucker and will give in to extortion straight away. If it gets lots of traffic, they put ads on the site and register it officially. The one I wanted went from non-existent site to page full of google ads overnight.

So I'm hoping that the site gets no interest at all and NS's poacher just released it in a week.

And if you're wondering, ICANN is fullly aware of all this, has been for a year or so, and doesn't really care. Out of curiosity I wrote them an email to complain, not expecting much. They said I should hire a lawyer if I think there's been a problem, and it would probably be released in a few days anyway, so case closed.

It's seems a pretty wretched situation to me, since we aren't talking small time scammers but a huge million dollar company, getting away with flagrently unethical (and probably illegal) business behaviour.

[xavier]

Hmm, when my domain comes up for renewal I suppose I'll move it over to a less bastardly registrar...I've been souring on NSI for a while now, inertia kept me there (I've had these domains for years, back when NSI was "just a registrar").

if you're in the US you can try to take it up with your Congressman too -- a case possibly could be made for trading on inside information, since that's essentially what they are doing.

It would also be interesting to see what a distributed WHOIS query on random domain names might do to the poachers...

[mkultra333]

Somehow it used to be free for the poachers to grab these sites and hold them for the 5 day grace period. My understanding is that ICANN changed the rules recently so that it costs 20c now.

I did some tests, because of the cost I think they're being a little pickier about which whois searches they poach. The site I had stolen had been registered in the past and related to a business, so it would be considered to have extortion or advertising potential. I tried a couple of silly names to see if they'd get poached, but they were ignored.

Perhaps they monitor who does the search as well, so not to steal from the same person on the same day. The reason being that Networks Solutions is in court over this stuff right now, and they deny the whole thing, so they need to be at least a little subtle about how they do it. But a google search for "Network Solutions" and "domain stealing" or "domain poaching" brings up an awful lot.

I'm not a U.S. citizen so can't do anything there, fortunately the name I was after is not urgently needed so I'm willing to bide my time.

[DanielSefton]

Yep, same happened to me 2 years ago.

They never used to do this, and they had a really nice domain availability check - I often used it to compare multiple domains with available tlds.

But then they introduced that ridiculous system of "protecting" your domain searches. I actually thought they'd stopped it by now... A while after they first introduced it they actually added a dialog box saying "Do you want to protect these domains?" or something like that, so at least you could say no. Seems that's no longer the case.

All you can do is wait 5 days. Your domain will be released, honestly. It's just that vindicated feeling you get after you find a domain you want and suddenly you can't have it.