Domain Squatter’s Piss Me Off
I rarely rant about things, but one thing I do love to get fired-up about is Domain Squatting. I’m not talking about your typical squatter who sits on a couple dozen names. I’m talking about the a-holes who register millions of domains. The ones that are impossible to get ahold of, even if you have a legitimate offer to make on a domain.
Eweek posted a story today about domain hijacking. In this particular article they talk about a company that gets ahold of whois tool data to buy a domain out from under someones nose.
The way it works is you go to some sort of domain lookup site. There are a million of them. After you spend time typing a few variations in you might leave for a bit, only to come back a couple hours later to find it has been registered by someone else.
That may not sound like a huge deal. After all you didnt buy it when you had a chance right? wrong…. There is a certain amount of trust you give a website when you are using it as a research tool. You expect that if you are researching domains that your information isnt going to end up in the hands of some squatter. Who is going to sit on the domain and never do anything with it.
So basically, what is happening is that the companies that provide domain lookup services are using the data of your searches to give a domain squatter an unfair advantage.
The moral of the story is; if you search for a domain name, and you find one you like, you better register it on the spot. Because if you don’t your more then likely going to find out that it gets hijacked by someone else.
Here is the eweek post
