Someone registered my very unusual domain..

Zascar

A few weeks ago I was searching for a domain name - it's very unusual and long - and it was no surprise to me that it was available - the .com and all the others were free when I searched on register365.

Last week I went to purchase it, but it had been registered. I could not believe it. This very unusual domain was registered just a few weeks after I had searched for it in the first place. Is this common? Do people monitor the searches and pre register to try to make money?

What's weird is I sent an email to the info@xx.com - to ask if maybe they would sell it to me. But it seemed to bounce back. However, I have email tracking software and today i see that they have read the email several times - and it's in Ireland too which makes me more suspicious.

I went and got the co.uk version anyway, but I'm just wondering - is this just a huge coincidence or does this kind of thing happen?

feylya

If you have that name somewhere else, like Twitter, people can register them. Surprised that they have MX set up against it though.

bpb101

Very unlightly , I have ran domain names to see we're they there with no intention of buying them. If people bought everyone I've googled, they would be down a few bob

Try webmaster@xx.com
Also some sites will try and broker buying a domain for you. They handle the contacting for you
Also maybe use.ie

cormie

I've often wondered this myself and have been very careful not to use just any random domain site to check for available domain names I've thought about and stick to the same one. That's not saying register365 are behind it, but it is very strange.

How long and unusual was it though? It could just purely be a coincidence.

Snowbat

In 2008, Network Solutions infamously started temporarily registering any available domain names that people were checking with the Whois tool on their website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

An ICANN advisory suggests that the risk is not only where you check domain name availability but also with services they may use to check availability in other TLDs.
http://img.domaintools.com/blog/domain-name-front-running.pdf

There is also the shady business of domain drop catching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_drop_catching


Who is the current registrant?

cormie

If the domain wasn't registered already, there wouldn't be a whois on it though? Assuming also that if the .com was available, than most likely, everything else would be too.

seamus

cormie wrote: »

If the domain wasn't registered already, there wouldn't be a whois on it though? Assuming also that if the .com was available, than most likely, everything else would be too.

That's the whole point though.

A site provides a "check to see if your domain is registered" tool. This tool is just a wrapper for a standard whois request to check whether the domain exists.
The site can then make a record of everything that comes back as "unregistered" and if the person doesn't follow through and buy the domain, the site goes back later on and takes it because it's potentially valuable.

Even if the site itself isn't doing this, there are many potential ways a 3rd party could do it. For example, if the site didn't actually write the whois checker itself, but are using a 3rd party library, that library could be relaying whois requests through another site and then using the results for their own gain.

Or banner or other ads could be scraping domain names from the referrer URLs on whois checkers.

Or even intermediate network operators just scanning traffic for whois requests and saving them.

Seems like a lot of effort to go to for a $10 domain registration, but it's easy pickings when the first thing any new venture - business or personal - does is register a domain. If you charge $80 to get the domain back and your average success is 1 in 5, you're onto a winner.

The effort involved in registration is minimal, MX records probably exist because the tool they use for this automatically assigns a template zone for every new registration.

OP, is there a holding page at xx.com or www.xx.com?

KenjiOdo

I've always suspected this myself, especially some of the lesser named registrars. There can be big money involved for some domains, remember baa.com (co.uk) parked with pictures of sheep etc, when british airways wanted the name.. even €500 for small business domains is a nice markup if its only costing you $3-9 p.a. , godaddy seem to park on a lot of domains for some reason, I'd be sceptical of searching domains with them for example.

On a side note .ie TLDs require the name to be registered as a business first unless its your name or some other stipulation, but you can't register Tesco.ie unless of course it's your business name.. (Just an example)

cormie

Interesting, I didn't think there were so many elements to it!

Zascar

Thanks all. There is now a "welcome to Parallels" landing page which is a virtualised web software. I just did a different whois and found out its a spanish guy, spanish host. Weird though as my email tracking software said he was in ireland. I'm not really bothered now as I ahve a different version - but just a note to others..